


On RWBY Wings IV: The Journey West

by sentinel28II



Category: RWBY
Genre: Adventure, Air Force, Air combat, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Angst, Fighter Pilots, Horror, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-10
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:28:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 23
Words: 131,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27990033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sentinel28II/pseuds/sentinel28II
Summary: It is summer 2001. Four female fighter pilots-Ruby Rose, Yang Xiao Long, Blake Belladonna, and Weiss Schnee-find themselves in a fight for the survival of a devastated world against Salem and her hordes of GRIMM. And it's a long way home.Welcome to Remnant...with a twist.
Comments: 105
Kudos: 41





	1. Night Moves

**Author's Note:**

> WHAT HAS GONE BEFORE: It is July 2001. Ruby Flight—Ruby Rose, Yang Xiao Long, Weiss Schnee, and Blake Belladonna—are reunited after being split apart after the Battle of Beacon. The Battle of "Haven"—Ashiya, Japan—has ended in victory. The White Fang has been destroyed, though its leader, Adam Taurus, is still at large. The Joint Inter-National Network (JINN) has been recovered by Yang, despite the efforts of Cinder Fall and Raven Branwen to get to it first. Ruby Flight is together again, along with their friends Norn Flight—Pyrrha Nikos, Oscar Pine, Lie Ren, and Nora Valkyrie.
> 
> However, the war is far from over. As Ruby and Norn Flights recuperate, they will realize that all of them have changed, some not for the better. Salem is still out there, and it is a long way home…

_Aso Bay_

_Tsushima, Nagasaki Prefecture, Japan_

_21 June 2001_

Cinder Fall surfaced and promptly threw up. She'd been underwater for several minutes, and could only hold her breath for so long before she'd swallowed seawater. As she crawled onto the rocky shore, she collapsed, except for dry heaves that racked her body. Then she lay there in a shallow cove, sucking in wonderfully pleasant air. She was alive, and ten minutes before Cinder was quite sure she wouldn't be.

It had happened so fast. One moment, she had been sitting nicely on the tail of Raven Branwen, about to end the bandit leader's life. The next moment, she was fighting a dying aircraft, after Pyrrha Nikos had fired a missile into her Su-27. She'd somehow managed to get the nose up and turn a lethal crash into a barely survivable one. The impact slammed her head into the instrument panel, and only her helmet had saved her. Water flooding the cockpit through the holed canopy revived her, and after blowing the canopy off, Cinder unstrapped and swam away from the sinking aircraft—but stayed underwater, knowing that Nikos was undoubtedly circling, waiting for her to surface. Pyrrha Nikos was known to have gunned down a dozen air pirates in their parachutes after the pirates had wiped out the Greek girl's squadron; Cinder had killed Pyrrha's lover Jaune Arc, so there was no doubt that she would be happy to gun Cinder in the water. Cinder had swam to shore, staying under as long as she could, with her lungs on fire and blackness at the edge of her vision.

She began to shake uncontrollably. The air was humid and warm, even with the sun beginning to go down, but the adrenaline of the fight to survive was wearing off. Cinder huddled up as best she could in the tiny cove and held herself until the shaking calmed down. At least she wasn't on fire. The memory of dangling in her parachute the last time she'd been shot down, during the Battle of Beacon, as the fire greedily ate at the flesh of her face, as the burning aviation fuel seeped into her eye, made her start trembling all over again. She slammed her remaining hand—her other was artificial—into a rock. The sudden pain stopped the shaking, even as Cinder muttered curse words in several languages.

Cinder heard tires squealing above her. The cove sat on a low cliffside, one that could be climbed easily enough. She looked up and saw a woman's face suddenly appear at the edge of a guardrail. " _Konnichi wa!"_ the woman called out. _"Daijobu desu ka?"_

Cinder didn't know how to speak Japanese other than a few phrases, but she could gather that the woman was asking her if she was all right. Cinder waved. _"Hai, hai!"_ The woman replied in a stream of unintelligible Japanese, and Cinder tried to remember some of those phrases. Finally, she recalled one. _"Nihon go ga hanasemasen!"_ I don't speak Japanese.

" _So ka!_ " the woman replied. "Do you speak English?" Her English was accented, but not heavily so.

"Yes!" Cinder yelled back. "I'm an American!"

"I will go to the police!" the woman called out. "They will come and help!"

"Just stay there!" Cinder ordered. "I'll climb up. I'm not hurt." Which, to Cinder's surprise, was true. Other than a few bruises and cuts, she'd survived the crash of her fighter unhurt. She might have thought it a miracle, if Cinder still believed in such things.

Cinder had taken off her helmet in the water, since it was heavy, but still had on her gloves, and her flight suit would protect her somewhat. Carefully, she climbed up the fifteen feet of cliffside, finding handholds in the damp rock. About five feet from the top, a cord nearly hit her in the face, and Cinder glanced up to see the woman dangling her jumper cables as an ersatz rope. She grabbed at the cables, and between the two of them, Cinder was able to tumble over the guardrail onto a small turnout. The woman smiled at her and bowed. "Hello!"

"Hi," Cinder puffed.

"You were shot down in the air battle?" The woman twirled her finger above her. Cinder heard jet noises, and her heart shot into her throat as she saw the distinctive profile of the F-22. Nikos was thousands of feet above her, but she could take no chances. "Yes," Cinder replied. "Can you take me to the police station?" A quick sweep on either side: there was no traffic, which was not surprising; Tsushima Island wasn't particularly densely populated.

"Yes." The woman leaned down and put a hand out, and Cinder struck. The knife was in a sheath on her survival vest, a simple push-button gravity knife designed for cutting away parachute cords. She drew it in one motion, and plunged it into the woman's throat with another. The woman gasped, then gagged, then fell as Cinder stabbed her a second time. Blood poured onto the sandy turnout and on Cinder's flight suit. The woman twitched a few times and was still, a look of utter surprise on her face.

Cinder did another quick check of the road, opened the rear door of the car, and dragged the body into the back seat. The keys were still in the ignition. As she pulled out with a shower of sand onto the road, Cinder pulled one of her maps from its waterproof pocket on one of her flight suit's kneepads. Tsushima had a ferry service to Busan. Cinder looked behind her at the body. They were even about the same size.

* * *

_Naval Hospital Yokosuka_

_Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan_

_24 June 2001_

Weiss Schnee gingerly tested her legs. Her right leg felt well enough, but the left leg was tender and weak. The nurse shook her head. "I don't think this is going to work. Let me get the wheelchair."

"Fine." Weiss sank back down onto her bed, and tried to think of anything but a full bladder. It had only been three days since she'd been shot down over the Sea of Japan, and for the past two days, any time she'd needed to use the bathroom had required a nurse to come get her, deposit her in a wheelchair, and run her the short distance across the room. It was annoying, though a lot better than having a catheter.

The door opened, but it was not the nurse. Winter looked up and her eyes rounded. "Wi… _Winter?"_

"Hello, sister." Winter Schnee was dressed in her formal Luftwaffe uniform, and Weiss was doubly surprised to see her elder sibling smiling at her with genuine happiness.

"What are you doing here?"

"I came to see you. I was notified of your shootdown and injury—" Winter was interrupted by the Navy nurse, who gently pushed the colonel out of the way, scooted over to Weiss, and helped her into the wheelchair. "Are you quite all right?"

"I have to _pee!_ " Weiss fended off the nurse and wheeled herself into the bathroom, slamming the door behind her. An embarrassed Winter walked hesitantly to the hospital bed. After a few minutes of awkward silence, they heard the toilet flush, the sink run, some muttered German curses, and then the door opened up, readmitting a relieved looking Weiss. The nurse helped her back into bed, spared Winter a glance that told her rank did not matter in a hospital, and left. "Sorry about that," Weiss said. Winter gave a short nod, her hands behind her back. Weiss did not get a hug, but she didn't expect it; her sister was not just named for the season she was born in.

"It's fine. I…I know of your injuries; the phone call I got informed me of them…but are you all right?"

Weiss nodded. "I still can't walk, but the doctors say I'm healing nicely. I should be able to move around on crutches by tomorrow or the day after next. They plan on discharging me next week." Weiss sighed and leaned back against her pillows. "It's very annoying. I can't do _anything._ The nurse even had to help me shave my legs and get me ready to shower. Ugh."

"Do they think you will fly again?" Winter raised an eyebrow when Weiss let out a snicker. "What's so funny?"

"Nothing. It's just that Ruby asked me that same question." Weiss smiled. "Yes. I will have to rehabilitate my left leg—I tore most of the ligaments, which they surgically repaired—but I will fly again. Hopefully within a month or two."

"Good." Winter still stood at parade rest. "Because I have brought you a gift."

It was Weiss' turn to raise an eyebrow. "What?"

Winter fought back a smile, none too successfully. "I flew _Myrtenaster_ here. It's sitting at Atsugi with the rest of Ruby Flight."

Weiss' face lit up with a beatific grin. "Winter? Are you serious?"

"I am _always_ serious, dear sister."

"But…my God, after what I did back in Germany…I went AWOL, Winter. I'm lucky you're not here to arrest me for desertion."

"What you did was wrong, Weiss, and I wish you had not done it." That was no surprise either, Weiss thought; Winter lived her life by the book. She ate, slept and made love according to regulation—if she even _had_ sex, Weiss mused; Winter was probably too uptight to have a lover. "It was risky in the extreme. And when we heard you had been shot down on that cargo flight over California…" Suddenly Winter's reserve cracked, and a hand quickly came up to wipe her eyes. "We thought you had been killed."

"I came close," Weiss admitted. She remembered the hair-raising flight through the southern California mountains, firing the tail guns of the Antonov An-12 transport in a desperate attempt to fend off the GRIMM drones attacking her. The firefight on the ground against scavengers after the crashlanding, and the death of Rick Tardor, the man who had helped her. The capture and imprisonment in Raven Branwen's bandit camp, with the threat that she might get sold into actual sex slavery unless the Schnee family paid a ransom. That reminded her of something. "How did Mother and Father, and Whitley—how did they take it?"

"Mother was depressed…but you would be proud of her, Weiss—she didn't start drinking. Whitley was worried, though it's hard to tell with him. Father…" Winter's hands clenched behind her back. "Father said he didn't have a daughter any longer, so it was no concern to him."

Weiss gave a derisive snort. "That's no surprise. If it hadn't been for Yang…"

"Which is why I brought _Myrtenaster._ You will need it, if Ruby Flight is to stay together." Winter smiled. "You have made good friends, Weiss. Unconventional, possibly deranged, but good friends. We'll need them in Europe."

"Europe…" Weiss mused. "How bad is it?"

"Bad," Winter answered. "General Ironwood began Operation Reforger without the permission of NATO; technically, he doesn't need it, but it's a courtesy. There are now three American divisions, plus the three already present, in Germany and Poland. He wanted to deploy two more, but the US Congress blocked the move, and the European Union has declared a moratorium on any further American personnel entering EU borders or airspace." Winter shook her head. "They're only allowing transport flights, and inspecting those for armed personnel. The EU is not allowing even any American fighters or bombers to enter European airspace besides those already there. The exception to this is Menagerie, because of the recent White Fang issues, but even then American combat aircraft cannot proceed any further."

"Insanity," Weiss remarked. "On everyone. Why did Ironwood even activate Reforger?"

Winter's expression turned frosty. "He believes—as do I, Weiss—that Salem's attack on Beacon presages a move against NATO. We were taken by surprise when she attacked here instead." She dropped her voice a little. "We know what she was after here, of course, and we were very happy to hear that Salem did not get her objective." Weiss knew Winter was talking about JINN, the Joint Inter-National Network, though why the mysterious Salem wanted it was still a little confusing to Weiss.

"Has Ironwood _told_ the EU about Salem?" Weiss asked, her voice also a little lower.

"No. He doesn't think they would believe him." Winter sighed. "Unfortunately, since the EU council does not know about Salem, I admit it does look like we're overreacting, or worse, overcompensating for the failure at Beacon. But what choice do we have? Without the Reforger reinforcements, an all-out attack by Salem would roll over Poland in days. They would make it to the Rhine before they were stopped. If then."

"What about NATO readiness?"

Winter laughed harshly. "A joke. Most of the NATO nations have cut back on their military budgets. We're lucky the Bundestag didn't cut the Luftwaffe back." Weiss heard the bitterness in her sister's voice. Winter tended to be singleminded, but Weiss knew the counterargument: why should NATO spend billions of Euros on an threat that seemed nonexistent to London, Paris, Brussels or even Berlin? The Polish and Carpathian Buffer Zones were the only places where GRIMM attacks happened outside of Scandinavia, and even then. Berlin didn't even hold air raid practice anymore, and why should they? The last GRIMM attack on the city had been before Weiss was born. "As it is, we have to rely on mercenary groups to assist with flying combat air patrols."

"The Happy Huntresses?" Weiss smiled.

"Yes," Winter replied sourly. Weiss fought back a bigger smile. The Happy Huntresses were an all-female air mercenary group that operated in eastern Poland, somewhat cooperatively with NATO. They were Huntresses in all but name, free hunters that went after the GRIMM when and where they wanted to, at least inside Polish borders. They were very good at their job—a little too good, which was an embarrassment to the NATO air forces. "They do well enough," Winter grudgingly admitted, "but Robyn Hill has talked about running for the EU Council. There's an open seat this fall."

"The one Father wants?"

"The same."

"Wonderful. How does she even have legal standing?"

"The Poles," Winter explained. "Even though there's not much left of the place, they still are part of the EU. They've agreed to run Robyn—they're saying Robyn's done more for them than the EU has." Winter gave a snort of her own, showing her opinion of that. " _Grusse Gott,_ Weiss. I didn't come here to discuss politics. I came here to see you."

"No, that's all right," Weiss replied. "I've been out of the loop."

The door opened and the nurse stuck her head in. "Colonel Schnee? I'm sorry, ma'am, but visiting hours are almost over."

Winter nodded. "Thank you, Lieutenant." She hesitated, then awkwardly leaned over and hugged Weiss, shocking her sister. "I will be here a few days, so we can talk more tomorrow. I…I love you, Weiss." The words were halting—not because Winter didn't mean them with all her heart, but because she was not used to saying them out loud.

Weiss hugged her back. "I love you too, sister." Winter gave her another nod, executed an about-face, and left the room. The nurse watched her leave, and gave a low whistle. "And I thought the _Marines_ were uptight," the nurse said, in a voice she thought Weiss couldn't hear.

* * *

Winter walked out of the hospital, putting her hat on and drawing on gloves, although it was hot and sticky outside. She stopped, thinking about if she wanted to head over to the base officers' club for dinner or return to the VOQ.

"Well, hey there, Ice Queen."

Winter turned and frowned as Qrow Branwen strolled towards her. She had the distinct feeling that he'd been walking around the hospital for the past half hour, just waiting for her to leave. "Major Qrow Branwen," she said, as if confronted with a bum asking her for money. The analogy wasn't too far off: Qrow was wearing his flight suit, unshaven with a few days of stubble, in violation of several regulations. "What rock did you crawl out from?"

"It's good to see you too." He leaned close to her. Winter's nose wrinkled. As usual, Qrow smelled like a brewery—one that had been carpet-bombed. "Want to go for a roll in the hay and make a baby?" He wiggled his eyebrows at her; to Winter's shock, he was not at all drunk. "I know this great little love hotel in Kabukicho. It's got mirrored ceilings and revolving beds."

"Why you…" Winter grabbed him by the front of his flight suit. "I should have you court-martialed for speaking to me in such a fashion!" She dropped her voice to a whisper. "I'll meet you at the VOQ in one hour. I have a car. Shave." Then she shoved him backwards, put her nose in the air, and walked in the opposite direction.

Qrow grinned and walked away as well, whistling happily.

* * *

_Demon Bar Shinjuku_

_Kabukicho District, Tokyo, Japan_

_25 June 2001_

"Wow," Ilia Amitola breathed, her cheeks turning bright red. "This is some… _potent_ sake."

"It is quite something," Blake Belladonna agreed. She coughed.

"Meh," Sun Wukong remarked. "I can think of some Chinese stuff that's stronger." The bar was fairly crowded, but Sun kept his voice down; this was not a time or place to rekindle old Chinese and Japanese rivalries.

"Who cares?" Neptune Vasillas said, putting down his shot. "We're not Beijing or Shanghai or wherever you were born."

"Hong Kong, dipshit," Sun shot back.

"That shithole?"

"Boys…" Blake growled, though she did it with a smile. Sun and Neptune glared at each other theatrically, then burst out laughing.

"Yes, _Mom,_ " Sun replied. "I'm going to go grab a beer. C'mon, Neptune, you dumbass."

"Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full, sir…" Neptune followed in Sun's wake, leaving Ilia shaking her head. "My God, there's two of them," she laughed softly.

"Neptune and Sun have known each other since before Vytal Flag," Blake said. "And yes, they're very much alike." She watched the two pilots walk away, both dressed in civilian clothes—Sun, as usual, had left the front of his shirt open to expose his impressive abdominal muscles. They were indeed a lot alike, even if Sun was a blonde monkey Faunus, with a tail curled behind him, and Neptune was a brown-haired human. Their haircuts marked them as military. Neptune had arrived in Japan the day before, aboard the USS _George Washington_. "Neptune looks better than he did yesterday. You should've seen him, Ilia—he was pale as a sheet." Blake stifled a giggle. "He hates water."

"And he's in the _Navy?"_ Ilia exclaimed.

"It's a long story." She and Ilia both leaned back in their chairs. They were drawing a few stares from the bar patrons. Both women were Faunus, though only Blake was obviously one, with cat ears poking out of her black hair; the interest was because both were rather attractive, and both dressed in rather tight jeans. Ilia sighed in happiness: she'd noted the attention and actually rather liked it. She'd spent her adult life with the White Fang, and over a year as a spy for the Central Intelligence Agency, imbedded deep within the Faunus terrorist organization. For the first time since Ilia could remember, she could simply have fun, without glancing over her shoulder for a policeman or worrying about a suspicious Adam Taurus murdering her.

Blake smiled at her. "Feels good, doesn't it?"

"A little too good," Ilia smiled back. "Like I don't deserve it."

"Well, you're going to have to get used to it," Blake replied. "Going against the White Fang at Ashiya has changed a lot of minds on how humans see us, especially here in Japan. Now it's up to you to take that progress and run with it."

"True," Ilia agreed. "With your father and mother starting a new Faunus movement, I've got faith we can make it work this time." She took a drink of water. "I think I may just take a vacation first, though. I've earned it, and Arashikaze gave me all my back pay yesterday."

"You sure have." Blake pushed her chair back to balance on two legs; Ilia knew she wouldn't fall, as Blake had a rather amazing sense of balance. "I wish I could. Supposedly I was on leave in Menagerie, but I didn't get to enjoy much of it, with people trying to kill me and all."

"They're not giving you any time?" Ilia asked.

"Probably just until Weiss rehabs her leg, and then we're off again. A month if we're lucky—and a lot of that's going to be spent planning and flying. Ruby Flight hasn't flown together in nearly two months. I've gotten used to flying on Sun's wing in his F-18, and now I've got to learn how to fly wing on Yang's weird F-23." She chuckled. "I'm glad Weiss got her Typhoon back, because now I don't feel so strange, being the only member of Ruby Flight who is still flying the same airplane I started with."

"Yeah," Ilia said wistfully. "I wish you didn't have to go."

"I know." Blake toyed with the shot glass. "My flight needs me. Hell, they needed me when Beacon fell, and I wasn't there. I'm not making that same mistake again."

Ilia laughed. "Blake Belladonna: always trying to save the world."

"Well, someone's got to."

Sun and Neptune returned with beers, and plunked them down on the table. "They've got a pool table here. You ladies want to get smoked tonight?"

Blake and Ilia looked at each other and grinned. "You're on."

* * *

An hour and two games of pool later, Sun carefully counted the dollars and yen, then stuffed them in his wallet. "Ladies, it's been a pleasure taking your money." Ilia gave him a dirty look. Blake gave him a dirty look _and_ the finger. Sun just laughed as they walked out of the bar. "Well, Neptune, it's still a bit early. What would you like to do?"

"Dude, I've been on a damn carrier for the past two months. What do you _think_ I want to do?"

"Oh, man." Sun turned back to Ilia and Blake. "Well, I'd better go keep an eye on this horny bastard. Unless you want to join us?" The invitation was there, waiting. Blake gave it serious thought: she and Sun had made love in her parents' home in Menagerie, and it had been pretty good. No, Blake corrected herself, it had been _damn_ good.

She gave him a smile instead. "Not tonight, Sun. I should really get back to Yokosuka. Yang and I have a familiarization flight in the morning." She did give him a hug. "Are you guys leaving in the morning?"

"Yeah, but not until late afternoon. Short hop down to Sasebo. Shouldn't be no strain. We'll come by and see you fine ladies of Ruby Flight before we leave to get the band back together." Sun had told them earlier that Ruby Flight wasn't the only independent flight that was being reformed: Neptune and Sun had been ordered to Israel, where they would link up with Scarlet David and Sage Ayana. He'd heard rumors that Coffee Flight—Coco Adel, Velvet Scarlatina, Yatsuhachi Daichi, and Fox Alastair—were there as well. Japan wasn't the only place that had seen increasing GRIMM activity as of late.

"What about you, Ilia?" Neptune grinned widely; if it had been an anime, Blake thought, his teeth would've twinkled. "You want to help us paint the town redder?"

Ilia saw there was an invitation there too; then again, if Neptune was any more obvious with his desire, he would've pulled her into one of the many love hotels in the district. She stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. "Not tonight, sailor. I have an early day too."

"Aww," Neptune groaned, but his smile showed he didn't take the rejection personally. "C'mon, Sun. Let's hit the beach."

"We're already _on_ the beach, dumbass," Sun replied, and put an arm around his friend, steering him away from the girls. He winked over his shoulder at them, and both Blake and Ilia stifled giggles as they heard him talking. "Now, I've been to Kabukicho before, Neptune, and there's this place with these Faunus girls. You won't _believe_ what they can do with their tails…"

"Oh God." Blake finally couldn't hold back the laughter any longer. "As my father would say, Neptune's going to end the night screwed, blued and dry-tattooed." Ilia erupted into uncontrollable giggles, and the two girls kept laughing as they left Kabukicho, entering the tamer section of Shinjuku. Ilia had gotten a hotel room earlier, as she intended to blow a very large chunk of her back pay on stuff she didn't need and didn't have a place for. She didn't care: Ilia had certainly never gotten a chance just to have fun shopping when she was with the White Fang. As they walked, Blake and Ilia window-shopped, bought some canned coffee from a vending machine, tried takoyaki-Ilia spit hers out once they were a polite distance from the open-air grill; Blake went back for seconds—and talked about anything and everything, friends enjoying each other's presence for the first time in years. Privately, Blake was happy to see Ilia happy, laughing without restraint, her guard completely down for the first time since they had been children. A few local men made a pass at them, which the two girls politely declined, and they were still laughing about it by the time they reached Ilia's hotel.

Blake stared up at it. "Wow. Five stars."

Ilia shrugged. "Arashikaze said it was worth it for a job well done. I'm not going to disagree." She didn't feel like remembering that the job well done had involved killing people she'd fought alongside for years. There would be time for that later; she felt too good now. "It's still early. Want to check out the room, maybe have a drink for the road?"

"Sure, why not." Blake followed Ilia into the hotel; the interior was just as impressive as the exterior. The suite Ilia had to herself was small, but plush. "The fridge is fully stocked," Ilia told her. "I'm grabbing a quick shower; I smell like cigarettes."

"Okay." Blake reached into the small refrigerator and pulled out a Yebisu Super Dry beer, popping off the top as she heard the shower cut on. She hesitated and then sniffed at herself. "Ugh." She smelled about the same as Ilia did. Luckily shore bases didn't observe Navy shipboard water conservation rules. When she had been on the _Reagan,_ it had been annoying to have to take "Navy Showers," where one got wet, shut the water off, soaped up, and then switched the water back on for a quick rinse.

Ilia didn't take long in the shower, and Blake sat on the bed as her friend came out, wearing a towel and drying her hair. Blake got up and began to turn around, to give Ilia some privacy to change, but suddenly Ilia just simply dropped the towel and stood there naked.

Blake wasn't bothered by it much: she had seen Ilia nude before. When out in the field with the White Fang, privacy didn't count for much, and they had both washed in lakes, streams, or just out of a bucket. She still turned her head away, thinking that Ilia would get dressed.

"Blake…please look at me."

The cat Faunus turned back to Ilia, who still stood there, her hands behind her back. "Ilia, what's going on?" Blake asked, though she had a feeling she knew the answer.

"I'm…I don't know when I'll get another chance to say this, and it feels right to say it now." Ilia trembled, and fought it down. "I love you, Blake. I…I…if it's okay…I want to _make_ love to you. Tonight. Here." Her skin turned colors with embarrassment and nervousness, shifting tones in seconds. "I know I'm not all that much…I don't have large breasts, if you're into that sort of thing…and I'm kind of short…"

Blake set down the beer, stood, and walked to Ilia. The chameleon girl began to shake again, with desire, and closed her eyes, offering her lips for the kiss. Instead, she felt the terrycloth of the towel being gently draped around her. Ilia opened her eyes. "Blake?"

"Ilia…" Blake drew Ilia down to sit next to her, back on the bed. "Ilia, I love you too…but I'm sorry." She shook her head. "I'm so sorry. I don't…love you like that."

Ilia was silent, then nodded. "I had a feeling you'd say that. After all, you're straight. You were with Adam. And you were with Sun in Menagerie." She angrily brushed tears away from her eyes. "Dammit. I told myself I wouldn't cry if you turned me down."

"How do you know I was with Sun in Menagerie?" It occurred to Blake that Ilia might have spied on the two of them through the guest room window.

"I've seen the way he looks at you, and you look at him. It's the same look you and Adam used to have." She leaned over, the tears running freely now. "I always wanted you to look at me like that."

"I loved Adam," Blake said. "Once. Sun…" Blake paused. "I don't love Sun. I like him a lot, but I don't love him. We had a one-night stand because we were lonely and needed someone."

"But you're not lonely now—" Ilia stopped herself, and used the towel to once more wipe her eyes. "No. Like I said, you're straight."

"Ilia, it's not a question of being straight or gay. It's a question of you being my oldest, and probably my best friend. Think about it. Even if we did make love tonight, would it change that friendship?"

"I don't think it would," Ilia insisted.

"I do," Blake told her. "I'm leaving soon. You'll be leaving in a few days when my folks go back to Menagerie. Who knows when we'll see each other again?" _Or if,_ Blake added mentally. It was going to be a long journey west, and she had a feeling Salem hadn't taken her best shot at Ruby Flight yet. They'd barely survived Beacon; Blake had barely survived the White Fang in Menagerie. Smart fighter pilots knew that their luck only lasted so long. "I can't do a long distance relationship, Ilia. And deep down…neither can you." She put an arm around her friend and pulled her close. "Ilia…what you're looking for…don't look for it in me. You need someone that will love you, fully and completely. And I don't know if I'm capable of that."

"Because of Adam?"

Blake shrugged. "Maybe a little. I'm certainly no longer in love with him." She laughed humorlessly. "If we were ever _really_ in love. I'm starting to think I talked myself into believing I loved him. He thinks he loves me, but he's wrong—Adam wants to possess me, like I'm his little catgirl bitch." The bitterness crept into her voice, and Blake stopped herself. "Sorry. Let's not talk about that asshole."

"Let's not." Ilia sighed. "I knew this wasn't going to work. I'm sorry for doing it."

Blake leaned over and kissed her friend's forehead. "Don't be. I'm flattered. I just wish…I wish I could, but I can't."

"Are you sure?" Ilia had to make one last try. She let the towel fall away again, down to her waist.

"Ilia, no. It wouldn't be loving you. It would be giving you a pity fuck because I feel sorry for you. And I swear to God that I will not do that to you. Not you. Not anyone, but especially not you."

Ila nodded, because she saw the truth in the statement. Blake would always love her as a friend; she'd loved her even when she'd thought they were enemies. Ilia wondered if, she hadn't been a CIA spy, if that love would've caused her to turn on the White Fang anyway. But while they would always be friends, maybe even best friends, they could not be lovers. And in the end, Ilia could not jeopardize that either. "All right." She pulled the towel back up. "It fucking sucks, but all right." She faced Blake, then suddenly smiled. "Although…" She opened her mouth and let her tongue roll out. As a chameleon Faunus, Ilia's tongue stretched well below her chin. Blake went bright red. "Holy shit," she said.

"I know, right? See what you're missing?" Ilia laughed, making it a joke. "The hell with it. Grab a hopeless lesbian a beer, will you? They got Nintendo here, and I still owe you for kicking my ass at Goldeneye when we were kids."

"You're on." Blake hugged her again, and opened the refrigerator.


	2. Along Came a Spider

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Blake and Yang confront each other for the first time since Beacon, Cinder makes her way to Lil' Miss Malachite.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another talky chapter, I'm afraid. We'll get to air combat here soon enough, but first we've got to get Cinder back in the game, and resolve some tension between Blake and Yang. If you're a Black Sun shipper, you'll like and hate this chapter. If you're a Bumblebee shipper...you'll like and hate this chapter.
> 
> Some very mild and oblique spoilers for RWBY Season 8 here. Since we now know Cinder's backstory, I was able to work some of it in.

_The Geomi Bar_

_Busan, Republic of Korea_

_25 June 2001_

Cinder Fall pulled the hood of her stolen coat up over her head and tried to ignore the warm downpour of the rain. She hoped this was the place; _geomi_ was the Korean word for spider. Or so she'd heard.

It had taken her the better part of three days to get to this point. On Tsushima, she'd found another isolated turnout and moved the body of the dead woman to the trunk, then abandoned the car at the ferry landing. Cinder had taken everything usable from the car: the woman had been a teacher, and carried a change of clothes, along with about a thousand yen in her wallet. It was enough to get her a ticket from Tsushima to Busan on the ferry. The woman had also carried a duffel bag in her car; Cinder had stuffed her flight suit in that, along with her pistol, survival vest and boots. By wearing the woman's light jacket and combing her hair down, Cinder was able to conceal her artificial arm and the scars on the left side of her face. The knife was taped to the inside of her left arm. A few people had glanced in her direction on the ferry, but no one had spoken to her or otherwise accosted her.

Busan was a crowded port city, so it was easy to lose herself there. As part of her survival vest kit, there were 20 gold coins sewn into the lining, each worth fifty dollars. She'd been able to exchange four of them for Korean won, and two of them had bought her two nights at a poor hotel in a rough section of town. Cinder didn't mind; she'd lived in worse. More of the dead Japanese woman's money and another coin got her food.

She heard a spate of angry Korean, which was another language Cinder didn't speak. It was a couple of teenaged boys, yelling at a teenaged girl in the alley next to the bar. They were clearly demanding something; Cinder wasn't sure if they wanted money or something else. Then one of them slapped the girl and knocked her down. Cinder saw what she was carrying: it was a bag of food. _"Um chang seki!"_ the tallest boy yelled, and kicked her.

Cinder knew she should keep moving on; this was not her business. Yet something she couldn't quite explain made her stop and walk into the alley. "What's going on here?" she asked loudly. Her hands were in the big pockets of the coat, her real fingers on the grips of the pistol.

One of the boys hurled abuse in her direction, but the tallest one left off of kicking the girl. He'd noticed her accent. "What you want, American bitch?"

"Her. What did she do?"

"She steal. Now fuck off." He stepped towards her. "Fuck off or we fuck you up."

Cinder grinned, pulled down the hood, and pulled back her hair. The boys' eyes got big. She knew quite well what they saw, because she saw it in the mirror every day now. The left side of her face was a horror of scar tissue: her normally flawless skin merged into bright pink, drawn tightly over the bone structure, with ridges of yellow where Salem's doctors had tried to give her something resembling a face, and only partially succeded. The eye was sewn shut; the eyebrow was gone. Her hairline was burned back, and only a stump of an ear remained. "I'm _already_ fucked up," she laughed.

The boys shrank back, and Cinder, widening her grin to satanic proportions, was the one who took a step forward. They turned and fled. Cinder's grin faded and she knelt. "Are you all right?" She let her hair fall down over her face to hide the scars. The girl nodded. Cinder helped her up. "All right. Get on now." She motioned with her head. The girl nodded, reached into the bag, and held out a piece of bread. Cinder shook her head, turned her back on the girl, and walked back to the street.

She walked into the Geomi and went up to the bar. The bartender looked her up and down, and said in accented English, "What would you like?"

"A Cass." He nodded, poured her a beer, and as he set it down, Cinder took his hand, rolling up his sleeve. On his wrist was the tattoo of a spiderweb. "And transportation."

The bartender jerked his hand back. He thumbed towards a door leading behind the bar. Cinder sipped her beer, then got up and followed him. He showed her through and barked something she didn't understand. A moment later, a man dressed in a business suit and mirrored sunglasses came out of the back room. "What do you want?" he asked. His English was flawless, British accented.

"Transportation. To Vladivostok."

"That will be expensive."

Cinder slowly drew back her coat, keeping her hands in sight, reached into her pocket, and withdrew the rest of the gold coins. He reached forward for them, but Cinder shook her head. "Half now, half when we get there."

The man nodded. "You do realize that if Lil' Miss doesn't know you, you're already dead."

Cinder smiled humorlessly. "She knows me." She dropped half the coins into his outstretched hand.

* * *

_Naval Air Station Atsugi_

_Atsugi, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan_

_26 June 2001_

Blake had her head down _Gambol Shroud's_ intake when she heard Sun Wukong yell "Don't do it, Blake! You need to _live!"_

She pulled her head out of the intake and saw him and Neptune Vasillas walking towards them, both in flight suits. To be accurate, Blake reflected, Sun was walking; Neptune was sort of dragging himself forward. She knew a hangover walk when she saw one. And as usual, Sun had his flight suit zipped down to his navel, his G-suit and survival vest slung over his shoulder. One of the female ground crew became rather distracted and promptly walked into the F-14's nose. Blake chuckled; the display of Sun's abdominals was clearly for her benefit. "I'm preflighting my plane, you dipshit," she yelled back.

He gave her a hug. "You didn't think I was gonna miss your big sendoff, did you?"

Neptune shook his head, painfully. "He overslept and absolutely almost missed this."

"Oh, you're one to talk, Mister I've Thrown Up Twice." Sun elbowed Neptune, which almost led to him throwing up a third time.

"Did you enjoy yourself?" Blake smiled.

Sun grinned and put a hand on Neptune's shoulder. "Captain Belladonna, I took away the boy. This morning I give you the man."

Neptune shrugged him off. "Gimme a break. It wasn't my first time on liberty."

"But it was your first time with a Faunus!"

Blake held up her hand. "I don't want to hear the sordid details, boys."

Neptune ducked down and saw the F-23 on the other side of the F-14. "Hey, is that Yang's new bird? I think I'll go check it out." He walked off.

"He's going to check out Yang, is what he means. That must've been a long two months." Sun ran a hand over _Gambol Shroud's_ wing glove. "Damn, this is such a great looking bird. It sure was a honor flying with you."

Blake led him off a little and dropped her voice. "So you're really going to Israel."

"That's right."

"Too bad," she sighed. "I have to admit, I think I was kind of getting used to having you around."

He struck a heroic pose. "Sun Wukong goes where he's needed." Then he shrugged. "And you don't really need me anymore."

"Well, when you say it like that," Blake frowned, her ears flattening back, "I feel like an asshole."

Sun put an arm around her. "Look…despite everything that happened, all the drama and people trying to kill me, I had a lot of fun in Menagerie." He motioned at the F-16 and the Typhoon parked a little ways further down the ramp. Ruby was not flying today; she was at the hospital helping Weiss. "You're with who you're supposed to be now, Blake. You're home."

"I suppose." She put a hand on his, and turned to face him. "Sun, I…I can't thank you enough. I'm still—"

"You're still working things out. I get it. But you can do it with Ruby Flight. And in the future?" He winked at her, curling his tail around her waist. "I got a feeling you haven't seen the last of me."

"I certainly hope not." She stood on tiptoe, grabbed the back of his head, and pulled him into a kiss. They stayed like that for a moment, tasting each other, remembering the night in her parents' house, then Blake broke off the kiss and dropped back down. "Now don't get all excited, Sun."

He surreptitiously put his hands over his crotch. "Hard not to do around you. Pun intended."

Blake shook her head, recalling what she'd told Ilia the night before. "I'm sorry…that I can't do more."

Sun chuckled. "It wasn't meant to be, Blake. But you know…if you're ever in Haifa and you want a booty call…you know where to find me."

Blake nodded. "I'll keep that in mind." She punched his shoulder lightly. "Now get out of here, you horny monkey."

"Yes'm." He gave her a sloppy salute, which she returned with Marine precision. "I'd better go collect Neptune…oh, here he is."

Blake looked past Sun and saw Neptune walking back towards him. Next to him was Yang, and there was no way she had missed the kiss. There was an expression Blake couldn't read on her friend's face.

* * *

That night, Blake ate dinner by herself. The flight with Yang had gone well enough, but it had been strictly profressional—no hassling or dogfighting, just formation flying around northern Japan, getting used to each other again. They had exchanged flight leads without problem, but there was something missing: the chemistry wasn't there. And then there was that look on Yang's face after Blake had kissed Sun.

Blake could stand it no more. She had to have it out with Yang.

She returned to the VOQ, and ran into Ruby, who told her—with a worried expression on her face—that Yang was at the gym, working out with Pyrrha. Blake hurried over to the gym, reminding herself that she needed to talk to Pyrrha as well; the two had not seen each other since Jaune had been killed at Beacon. She wondered how the Greek girl was handling it; from what she'd heard, she had gotten her revenge on Cinder Fall, at least.

She entered the gym and found Yang and Pyrrha fairly easily: Yang was holding a boxing bag, while Pyrrha attacked it. Blake watched in equal parts amazement and worry. Pyrrha was not only punching it with blows that would've killed someone if the bag had been a human being, but kicking them as well, with bare feet; evidently, Pyrrha had been studying some MMA techniques. Yang saw Blake watching them, but waited until Pyrrha was finished. "'Sup, Blake."

Pyrrha turned, wiping sweat from her forehead. "Oh! Hello, Blake." The Faunus was cheered slightly by her tone of voice: it still had that friendly, singsong lilt to it. "I would give you a hug, but I'm very sweaty at the moment."

"Oh, that's okay." Blake came up to them. Pyrrha pulled off her boxing gloves and shook hands with her. "It's good to see you, Pyrrha."

"And you, Blake. I'm glad to see that you're all right. We've heard a little about what happened in Menagerie."

"And I'm glad you're doing better." Blake looked down. "I'm so sorry about Jaune. We all liked him. He was a good man. I know…I know you guys were close."

"Thank you, Blake. It's very much appreciated." She smiled. "I think I'll go do some lifting, Yang. Why don't you and Blake go have a talk?"

"I'll spot for you," Yang said.

"That's not necessary. You two need to catch up." Pyrrha put just enough steel into her voice to let Yang know it was an order, and even if it was something of an overreach of rank, Yang had damned well better obey.

"Fine," Yang snapped. She began walking towards the showers. "C'mon, Blake." The Faunus hurried to catch up.

* * *

The showers were deserted, and Yang quickly stripped naked, tossing her workout clothes into a duffel. Her clothes hung in a locker. "Talk to me in the shower if you want," she told Blake, and went in, switching on the spray.

Blake raised her voice. "Look, about today…"

"What about today?"

"When I…um…"

Yang pulled her hair back to let the water run down her face. "When you played tongue hockey with Sun?" She shrugged. "None of my business."

"You just…well, you had a weird expression, Yang."

"Like what?"

Blake shrugged. "That's just it. I don't know."

Yang grabbed a bar of soap and began washing herself. "Did you fuck him?"

"Yang!" Blake exclaimed. "God!"

"Well, did you?" Yang laughed. "Hell, Blake, I hope you did. Sun's hot as hell. I'd bang him. I'd bang him twice." She wiped soap out of her eyes. "Well?"

"Yes," Blake admitted. "Just once…at my parents' place. I was really lonely."

"You don't have to explain it, Blake," Yang told her. "I'd fuck Sun on general principle. Was he good? Is he hung?"

"Yang…" Blake covered her eyes. "That's not what I wanted to talk to you about."

Yang poured a very generous amount of shampoo in her hair; then again, she had a lot of hair to shampoo. "Damn shame!" she yelled as she turned up the hot water. "I really want to hear _all_ the spicy details!"

"I don't want to talk about that!" Then Blake had to wait as Yang washed and rinsed off her hair, until it fell in shining golden waves to her rear.

Yang switched off the water. "Okay," she said, "what did you want to talk about? You think I was jealous or something?" She gave her a wry smile. "I mean, I _am._ Bagging Sun Wukong is something I've had a few wet dreams about."

"Would you quit being so damn crude?" Blake pleaded.

"What? I like sex. What's your problem?" Yang's smile faded. "Or did you think I was jealous because you weren't kissing _me?"_

Blake folded her arms. "Are you?"

Yang snorted. "I'm not a lesbian. You're hot as North Carolina asphalt, Blakey, but I don't want to sleep with you. I'm not that fucking desperate. So yeah, maybe I was a little jealous you were kissing Sun, but that's only because _I_ wanted to kiss him. Among other things." She brushed past Blake, who could tell Yang was starting to get angry. _Progress,_ Blake thought glumly.

"Why don't you just say it?" Blake demanded as they walked back to the lockers.

Yang didn't answer at first, toweling off. Then she turned and pulled out clean underwear from her bag. "Why don't _you,_ Blake?" She pulled on her panties and yanked open the locker with enough force to bend it. "Why don't _you?_ "

"Because you're the one who's angry at me. Yang," Blake said, softening her voice, "I just want to get this out in the open. We're going to be flying together again."

"We flew together today." Yang struggled into a bra; her considerable bosom didn't make that task easy. "I thought everything went great. You didn't say anything in postflight."

"Because it was fine. But it doesn't address the problem."

Yang pulled out her clothes, threw them onto the bag, and slammed the locker shut with a bang heard all across the gym. "God _dammit_ , Blake!" she shouted. "Either say what's eating you or shut the fuck up about it!"

" _You hate me!"_ Blake shouted back. She dropped to the bench, her face in her hands. "You hate me," she repeated, fighting back tears.

Yang stared down at her, and sighed. "I don't hate you, Blake." She grabbed her pants and put them on. "I did. I'll admit that. If you had walked into my hospital room after Beacon, my first act with this artificial arm would've been punching you with it. And I'll also admit that, when Dad got me to stop feeling sorry for myself, I used a lot of that hate for motivation. But I don't hate you anymore. I wouldn't have you on my wing if I hated you. I would've told Ruby and Weiss that it was either me or you."

Blake rubbed her temples. "Yeah. And they would've chosen you. After all, Ruby's your sister and you saved Weiss' life."

Yang pulled on her shirt. "Okay. You want the truth? Here it is." She bent over and got in Blake's face. "You _ran._ " She held up a hand for silence, her artificial one. "Now if Dad was here, he'd slap me upside my head and tell me I'm being ungrateful. And to a certain extent, he's right. You landed your Tomcat and tied off my arm, otherwise I would've bled to death before that Army tank commander with the big tits found us. And Rubes told me you got back into the fight. And I _don't_ blame you for this." She held up the metal arm. "That was that fuckhead Adam's fault, along with my own for doing something stupid. So _this_ isn't your fault."

"Then what—" Blake began.

"We needed you," Yang cut her off. "Ruby needed you. Jesus, Blake. I was a mess after Beacon—having to come to terms that I got my ass shot off, and learning how to use an arm all over again. Weiss was forced to go back home. Rubes was left to pick up the pieces. And oh yeah, Pyrrha tried to kill herself, she was so torn up about Jaune. That's her therapy, what you saw tonight. When she can't handle it, when it gets too much, she goes into the gym and punches something until she's exhausted. She's got a recording of Jaune's voice, and she listens to that. Over and over again. Ren and Nora have done their best to help out, and Pyr's better now. But for awhile, after Beacon? She lost her mind, Blake. And so did I." She took the wet towel and tossed it into the basket. "Right then is when we needed someone. Ruby, me, Pyrrha…we needed you. And you weren't there."

"Oh God," Blake sobbed. "Yang, I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

"I know. And honestly, I can't blame you for going to Menagerie to sort stuff out. And I'm totally not jealous of you banging Sun. You're a grown woman; hell, you can screw Weiss for all I care. But God, Blake…you didn't even call." Yang shook her head, her lip trembling. "You're my best friend. You're one of the only friends I've ever had. And you didn't even call. And I waited. A lot of people called. For fuck's sake, _Cardin_ called. But you didn't."

Blake's tears rolled down her cheeks to land on the concrete floor. "What can I do? What do you want me to do? How do I stop this?"

Yang hesitated, then sat down next to her. "Well, you're here now. You're back. And like I said, if I didn't want that tight Faunus ass of yours around, I would've said something." She put an arm around Blake. "Oh, hell. I'm over it, Blake. I forgave you."

"When?"

"Weiss and I had a pretty good talk about it. I think then. Besides, I'd be a real stone-cold bitch if I didn't. Like my piece of shit mother—Raven, that is. I'm not gonna turn out like she did. Ruby and Weiss didn't hate you, so how the hell could I?"

"You have a very good reason to," Blake said quietly.

"Well, I don't. Okay, yeah, I've been kind of standoffish with you. Something was eating you and it wasn't just Sun."

Blake giggled despite herself. "Yang!"

"And I'm glad you finally came out with it." Yang sighed. "Because I probably would've never said anything. Bad habit of mine. Weiss would've just hit you between the eyes with it and Ruby would've just started crying. Me, I bottle things up."

"I'm just so sorry," Blake insisted.

Yang sighed again, then grabbed her without warning. She pulled the Faunus over her legs and delivered three hard smacks to a stunned Blake's rear end. Blake squirmed out of her grasp and jumped to her feet, aghast. "What the actual _hell?"_

Yang got up. "There, you've been punished. All done. Want me to send you to bed without dinner?"

"Well, I already ate…" Blake was still in shock.

She put a metal finger against Blake's chest. "Listen. _You're forgiven._ I don't hate you, Blakey. Did I? Yes. But that's over. It's behind us. Ruby loves you, Weiss loves you in her own weird Kraut way. Pyrrha loves you, and Ren and Nora and Sun and probably even that short chick from the CIA. Now you have to forgive yourself."

The locker room was silent for a minute, then Blake forced herself to meet those lilac eyes. "We're the same age," she said quietly. "When did you get older than me?"

"You mean, when did I grow up?" Yang picked up the duffel with her artificial arm. "When I woke up, looked down, and saw this thing hanging there. Kind of rough, finding out you're not immortal." She reached out and wiped Blake's cheeks. "Feel better?"

"A little."

"Good. Let's go grab a beer. I'm hungry _and_ thirsty. You're buying, Marine."

"Of course." Blake allowed herself to smile. Maybe it would be okay. She was glad she'd forced it into the open. The wound could now heal. There was still something there, she would still need to make up for what had happened, but it was a beginning. She'd closed a chapter with Ilia, and begun a new one with Yang.

Yang stopped at the doorway. "You know, you still haven't answer my question."

"What?" Blake asked.

"Is Sun hung?"

Blake rolled her eyes. "I'll tell you over a beer."

* * *

_The Pauk Bar and Grill_

_Vladivostok, Far East Russia Dead Zone_

_26 June 2001_

"We're here," the man in the mirrored sunglasses said, as he pulled over to the side of the road. He held out his hand, and Cinder put the remaining gold coins in his palm. He nodded to the Pauk. "You're on your own now."

"Thanks," Cinder replied sarcastically, and got out of the car. It was raining here too, though it was a light drizzle that just made everything miserable rather than soaked and miserable. The car pulled away and Cinder was left staring at the front of the bar. It was a rather nice place, all things considered, half-timbered like a German gasthaus. But that was Vladivostok: half of it was fairly nice where well-to-do people lived, half of it was slums where the desperate and the hungry murdered each other for scraps. It had been one of the few Russian cities to escape nuclear annihilation; for some reason, the US Navy had never launched on the city or its naval base. The latter was deserted now, used by fishing vessels and whalers; the Soviet Navy—what little had survived the initial nuclear exchange—had been ruthlessly hunted down after the nukes had stopped flying. Few had survived, though rumors persisted that at least one Soviet heavy cruiser was somewhere in the Black Sea, a ghost ship talked about by many but seen by few.

Cinder shook off the ghost stories; she was tired and she wasn't thinking straight. She knew that she had to start, or she would be very dead in the next ten minutes. She walked into the bar, noticing the spiderweb etched into either side of the entrance. She was definitely in the right place.

A few heads turned as she walked in, but it was only idle curiosity rather than recognition. Finding Lil' Miss Malachite was no trouble: the matron of the Malachite Gang commanded the finest table in the bar, atop a dais in the back. She owned the bar, she ran Vladivostok, and everyone knew it. It was the Malachite Gang that kept Vladivostok free of foreign interference, which the fiercely independent locals appreciated.

Cinder went up the stairs. Malachite looked up from her rather heroic meal. She was heavyset, somewhat obese, with short-cropped blonde hair. "That's far enough." The language was Russian, but it was delivered in a drawl that was pure Georgia—the state, not the country. Cinder drew back her hood and raised her hands. Malachite dabbed at her mouth and leaned back in her chair. "Well, as I live and breathe. If it ain't Cinder Fall." She switched to English, which made her drawl even more pronounced. The odd thing was, Cinder knew, it wasn't an affectation: Lil' Miss really _was_ from the American South. How she had ended up in control of an air pirate gang and the de facto mayor of Vladivostok, Cinder didn't know.

"Sit yourself down." Malachite motioned over one of her retainers; there were two of them, male and female, standing behind her, wearing the purple tunic that marked her gang. "Now I know you gave all the gold you had to my associate to get yourself here to Vlad'vostok, so you're broke as hell, am I right?"

"I have a little money left," Cinder replied, sitting. She probably had enough to stay a night and eat dinner—once.

"Uh-huh. But I know you don't have enough to pay me."

"Salem paid you. Handsomely."

"Go get Miss Fall here some dinner," Malachite ordered the girl. "Some mashed taters and a steak sound good?" Cinder tried not to let her mouth water at that. "I reckon it does. It's horsemeat, but it's fresh." The girl nodded and left, and Malachite took a drink, finishing it. "Marty, why don't you bring us some mint juleps? I know it's a stereotype, but I do like 'em." He gave his leader a short nod and left as well. Cinder was alone with Malachite, but knew that, if she tried anything, the large woman's gang would kill her in seconds. It also told her Lil' Miss didn't fear her. "This one's on the house, Cinder, because I'm curious as to how the hell you're still alive." She took a big bite of her own steak. "You see, your friends Emerald and Mercury and Hazel came through here a few days ago, and they're pretty damn certain you're as dead as Kelsey's nuts."

Cinder had no idea who Kelsey was, or why only his testicles would be dead. "I was shot down over Tsushima, but I was able to ditch the aircraft and escape. I stole a car, killed a woman for her clothes and money, and took the ferry to Busan. You know the rest."

"I do."

"And I'm sure Salem can compensate you for whatever expenses I incur."

"She could…but here's the poke." Malachite leaned forward. "I signed a contract with Salem. The contract was to fit your bunch out and rescue your ass if you got shot down over the Sea of Japan. I did that. Contract's done. And given that you're supposed to be dead, and I'm not seeing any evidence of you having that JINN thing you was talking about when you were here before—oh yes, ma'am, I know—I'm guessing that if you return to Salem emptyhanded, she's going to kill the shit out of you."

The thought had occurred to Cinder that Salem would not be pleased—after all, Cinder had failed her mission, and lost a rather valuable prototype fighter in the process. "I'll take that chance."

"You're gutsier than me, that's for certain." Malachite smiled as Marty set out the mint juleps. She took a sip and motioned for Cinder to do the same. To the other woman's surprise, it was quite good. "But I don't feel like taking that chance. And when Lil' Miss fulfills a contract, she don't go bending the rules."

Cinder took another drink. She felt the weight of the pistol in her pocket. She wouldn't survive, but she was fairly certain she could put a bullet in Malachite's face before she went down. "So, where do we go from here?"

"Well, first of all, you take that gun out of your pocket and put it on the table, slow now. I know you're packing; you wouldn't come in here unless you were heeled." Cinder complied, putting the Beretta on the table, though she kept her hand on it. "And if you were thinking about killing me before my boys and girls get you, I allow you that you might be able to pull it off. So how about I make a _new_ contract—just you and I?"

Cinder took her hand away from the pistol. "I'm listening."

"So Salem thinks you're dead. But I reckon your enemies do too. That gives us a business opportunity. So here's what we're gonna do." She tossed off half the mint julep, and wolfed down some mashed potatoes. "You wanted revenge on this Ruby Rose chickee, right? Kill her for burning half your face off?"

"Yes," Cinder replied, and couldn't keep the hate out of her voice.

"Well, that's just fine, because I know that Raven Branwen got back to California in a real snit. I got spies in her organization, you see. So that means she didn't get JINN. Which means this Ruby Flight's got it."

"It's halfway to America by now," Cinder told her.

"Nope. Because you see, I know something that your girl Salem don't, and I bet the CIA don't neither." The potatoes and steak were placed in front of Cinder. "You eat, girl, and I'll tell you a little story." Cinder did, and listened. Malachite knew about JINN, and had for some time—not because Salem had told her, or because she had contacts in any American intelligence agency. She knew because she'd bribed the contractors who built the Tsushima facility. "I've been wanting that thing for years," Malachite sighed, "but I knew I couldn't get into the vault."

"Why did you want it?" Cinder forced herself to slow down and eat properly; part of her wanted to cram the food down, she was so hungry. And hunger was nothing new to Cinder Fall.

Malachite laughed. "Are you kidding, hon? All that information at my fingertips? Man alive, I could be richer than Croesus with all the money that info would buy. And now that it's in the open—I can." Malachite toasted Cinder with the julep. "So, Cinder, you're gonna get me that JINN. I know how to track it. You get it for me, I write off all your debt. Hell, I'll even give you a plane. It won't be as good as that sleek bastard you were flying a week ago, but it'll get the job done."

Cinder finished her steak. "There's only one poke, like you said. If Salem finds out you have JINN, she'll turn this place to ashes, and you with it."

"She won't, because I'll give it to her." Malachite folded her hands across her stomach in satisfaction. "After I've copied everything on it, but I'm sure Salem won't mind overmuch." Cinder wasn't so sure about that; something told her Salem was not planning on sharing JINN's information with anyone. That was fine, however: it meant getting another aircraft, getting a chance to get revenge on Ruby Rose, and getting back into Salem's good graces. In fact, she could recover JINN herself, and Lil' Miss could twist in the wind.

"Now I know what you're thinking," Malachite said. "You'll grab JINN and light out for wherever Salem's hiding, and leave poor ol' Lil' Miss hanging. Well, that ain't happening, hon, because you try to crawfish and cross me…" She smiled. "I'll hunt your ass down and finish what Ruby started. You want to see what happens when people cross me, you just go outside of town to the north. I'm in the skinning game, you see. I leave their corpses hanging from trees, as a warning."

Cinder managed to suppress a shudder. The spider was showing her fangs. "It sounds like we have a deal, Miss Malachite."

Malachite slid her chair back, walked around the table, and put a hand out. Cinder rose and shook it. "Glad to hear it. Now you finish that their plate, and I'll put you up here until I find out a little more. Say about a week or so. Call it a down payment." Malachite suddenly glanced up. "Oh, I done plain forgot. I got another boarder here from that fight over Japan." She motioned someone over. Cinder turned and nearly fell in surprise. Then again, so did the Faunus now standing in front of her. "I don't know if you two know each other, but let me introduce the High Leader of the White Fang, Adam Taurus."


	3. Take the Long Way Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ruby and Norn Flights get their orders. In Vladivostok, Cinder Fall decides to get drunk...and has an unexpected drinking partner.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another chapter without much in the way of action, but this one is a chapter that's very necessary to set up the story heading literally west. I hope this isn't getting boring...I promise there will be air action next time. Promise!
> 
> People who read "Love Hurts" will recognize the latter half of this chapter being very similar to a chapter in that story, to the point that I did recycle some of the dialogue. However, while that chapter was presented strictly for laughs, this one combines dark humor with what I hope is some characterization...and something very ominous.
> 
> I noticed that in an earlier chapter of "On RWBY Wings," I said Ironwood was Army. He's USAF, and always has been. Sorry about the continuity error.

_Naval Air Station Atsugi_

_Atsugi, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan_

_27 June 2001_

"Hey, Weiss!" Yang greeted the German girl as she limped into the ready room on crutches. "How's the leg?"

"It hurts," Weiss glowered at her. She almost tripped, but balanced herself, and gave Ruby a dirty look too. "Ruby, I am fine! You don't have to baby me."

"But Weiss," Ruby protested, "you're still hurt! Are you sure you should be out of bed?" Weiss' legs were both in casts; the left leg was in one from ankle to knee. Although she was cleared to use a wheelchair, Weiss had defiantly refused.

"I'm not an invalid, you dolt!" Weiss thumped along the floor to one of the chairs, fended off Ruby with one of the crutches, and lowered herself into the chair with a sigh.

"Tell me you didn't miss this," Yang told Blake, who smothered a laugh with her hand. Then to Weiss, she raised her voice. "They give you painkillers?" Yang had lived on painkillers for a week, before she had asked Taiyang to take them away from her, fearing she would get addicted.

"Yes. They make me sleepy, though." Weiss tried to get more comfortable, and sucked in her breath when her leg slightly went the wrong way. " _Mein Gott._ I wish they'd just cut my leg off and given me something like you have, Yang!"

Ruby and Blake both gasped at Weiss, but Yang just laughed. "Yeah, that would've been badass. Then you'd really be Scar Schnee." Despite herself, Weiss laughed too.

"What's all the racket in here?" Qrow Branwen ambled into the ready room. "Oh, hey there, Weiss. How's the leg?"

"Oh, it's _fine,"_ Weiss half-sang sarcastically.

Qrow sat down next to her, stretching out his long legs. Ruby Flight noticed he had shaved, and smelled of pleasant cologne. "What's the occasion, Uncle Qrow?" Ruby asked.

"Just felt like shaving." He winked at Weiss. "Actually, I saw your sister off on her flight back to Germany."

"I imagine that went well." Weiss was still being sarcastic. "What part of your anatomy did she threaten to chop off?"

"The usual," Qrow grinned. That happened to be true, he reflected; Winter _had_ threatened to unman him. Of course, that was for public consumption: once there were no prying eyes, she had kissed him deeply and even remarked that she would miss him. It was, Qrow thought, a nice way to top off a few very pleasant nights with Winter. _Careful,_ he told himself. _Better not get too close to her._ Still, he was going to enjoy the memory…even if his back hurt.

As Ruby sat next to Weiss, Norn Flight arrived. "Hello again," Pyrrha greeted them, as usual. "Weiss! You're here! How's the…" The temperature dropped noticeably as Weiss turned to look at her. Pyrrha said no more and took a seat.

"Hey everybody!" Nora came in, swinging the hand that held Ren's, forcing him to keep pace with her. "Oh, hey, Weiss!" Oscar followed in their wake.

"Don't," Weiss warned.

"Ahh, it looks fine." Nora lightly kicked the cast, and Weiss' eyes went wide with pain. Ren let go of Nora's hands and cuffed her in the back of the head. "Ow! Ren!"

"Thank you, Ren," Weiss said.

Nora rubbed her head and gave Ren a dirty look of her own, and sat down behind Weiss; Ren sat next to her. Oscar found an open seat, and hid his blush when he realized he'd ended up next to Ruby.

"Weiss, you seem in a worse mood than usual," Blake remarked. "Are you sure you feel up to this?"

"I'll be all right, Blake, really." Weiss softened her tone. She _was_ being unnecessarily grumpy.

"Aunt Flo in town?" Yang needled Weiss. Weiss looked confused, and Yang leaned closer. "You know, you riding the cotton pony this week?" The German girl still was perplexed.

"You on your period?" Ruby asked, deciding to cut to the chase.

Weiss' retort and Nora's gales of laughter was cut off as the door to the ready room opened. Oscar saw the short, raven-haired older woman and sprang to his feet. "Attention on deck!"

"No, don't get up," Rissa Arashikaze said, shutting the door behind her. "I don't merit that."

"You _are_ the deputy director of intelligence of the CIA," Qrow pointed out, though he hadn't gotten up.

Arashikaze shrugged. She took in Weiss' leg. "How long?"

"Three weeks." The doctors had said two months, but Weiss had no intention of waiting that long before she got back into the cockpit.

"Good." Rissa unlatched her briefcase. She pulled out, then hung up a large map of Asia. She took out a red marker from her pocket and drew a line from Atsugi to China, across China to Kazakhstan, then to Turkmenistan, Iran, and finally Turkey. "Ladies and gentlemen, this is your next assignment."

"Should we choose to accept it," Yang quipped.

Arashikaze smiled. "Sorry to tell you this, Captain, but I'm not giving you a choice."

"We call those _orders,_ " Blake whispered _sotto voce._ Yang nodded sagely, as if it was the first time she'd heard of the concept.

"I don't have a fancy operation name for this, so I'll allow you to come up with something later." Arashikaze leaned against the desk. "Simply put, you'll be responsible for taking JINN from here to General Ironwood in Europe." She put up a hand. "Hold your questions until I pause, please, but I have a feeling I know what you're thinking…and you're right. Why nine of you to fly security for a computer from here to Europe? Why not put it in the diplomatic bag and fly it to Ironwood? How are you going to get to Ironwood when the EU has their airspace under lockdown to foreign military traffic?" She ticked off the points on her fingers. "To answer each in turn: because that's how important JINN is. The majority of the people who know she even exists are right here in this room. I can't risk that diplomatic bag being opened by some flunky from the State Department. And you've proven time and again that I can trust you." Arashikaze sighed. "As far as the lockdown…I'm working on that. We can at least get you as far as Incirlik in Turkey."

Despite Arashikaze's instructions, Qrow raised a hand, and didn't wait to be called on. "Isn't going to look kind of funny if nine dissimilar aircraft suddenly take off and head west? We got to assume that Salem still has watchers here in Japan. I get the feeling she'll know."

"As do I," Arashikaze agreed. She tapped the briefcase. "In here are orders for Major Qrow Branwen, Major Pyrrha Nikos, Captain Ruby Rose, Captain Yang Xiao Long, and 1st Lieutenant Nora Valkyrie of the United States Air Force; Captain Blake Belladonna of the United States Marine Corps; Ensign Oscar Pine of the United States Navy; Hauptmann Weiss Schnee of the Luftwaffe; and Captain Lie Ren of the Chinese Unified Air Force. You are being reassigned forthwith to United States Air Forces Europe at Ramstein, under the direct command of Supreme Allied Commander Europe, General James Ironwood, USAF, or anyone he should assign as your commanding officer in his stead." She smiled. "You have also been granted Permanent Change of Station to Ramstein, as well as three weeks leave before you leave—with the exception of you, Major Branwen, but only the PCS part. You still have orders, and you still have three weeks leave. You're just working for me now, the same way you worked for Ozpin."

"Okay," Qrow nodded. He'd grown to like that arrangement. He rather liked the idea of going to Europe, too—it made him closer to Winter. _Stop thinking about her,_ he commanded himself.

"Your cover is this." Arashikaze pointed at the map. "In one month, the Unified Republic of China is inaugurating its Silk Road train route. At the cost of billions of yuan, China has built a bullet train from Xi'an to Almaty in Kazakhstan. The plan is eventually to build it all the way to Turkey, but that's as far as they've gotten at the moment. The train will leave Xi'an and go to Almaty, and in the spirit of international cooperation and harmony, twelve aircraft from several nations will be protecting that train from GRIMM attack and air pirates. And nine of those twelve are you, obviously. The other three will get assigned over the next three weeks—I'll let you know." She nodded. "I have paused."

Blake raised a hand. "In a month? But you said we had three weeks."

"I'm sure Beijing can be persuaded to move up their timetable a week. I'll be flying down to Shanghai tomorrow to ask them. If they don't agree, we'll just give you an extra week of leave." Another smile. "I'm sure they'll agree." The nine pilots wondered what sort of deals were going to be made over that. "One person who does know about JINN is my opposite number in the National Security Bureau, but he's the only one. As far as everyone else is concerned—and as far as you tell anyone—you're doing this for international relations. Don't worry; you won't have to do interviews or anything. We'll issue press releases and such, and keep the media far away from you."

"Thank goodness," Pyrrha said in relief.

"Once you've reached Almaty, you'll have about a day to rest, then you'll fly to either Ashgabat in Turkmenistan or Tehran in Iran. The latter is having another one of their bouts of political instability—all too common since the Shah returned to power…" Arashikaze raised her hands again. "Sorry, tangent. From there you'll fly on to Incirlik. Hopefully by then we'll have managed to convince the EU to let you guys in. Once that happens, you'll fly from Incirlik to Ramstein. Hand over JINN to Ironwood, and it's God bless us, every one."

Ruby raised a hand this time. "What about divert fields and tankers and such?"

"I'll allow you to plan all that," Arashikaze answered. "I'm not doing _all_ the work. You people handle the nuts and bolts of the mission planning. Whatever you need, let me know, and you'll get it—within reason. I'll be in Shanghai for three days, then back here for two or three, and then back to Greenbrier. But Major Branwen knows how to reach me at any time." Another nod. "I have paused again."

Ren put up his hand. "Miss Arashikaze, I will need a new aircraft."

"Certainly, Captain. I haven't forgotten you. That will be one of the things on the agenda in Shanghai." She actually winked at him, making her look for a moment like an impish elf. "I'm sure we'll work something out. Another J-10, or something else?"

"A J-10 would be fine," Ren smiled. "I'm really not interested in something exotic, unlike _certain_ people here." Yang blew him a raspberry. "There is one other thing. While China has been reunified for almost a decade now, we're still something of a secretive people. I do not think my government will quite accept the idea of twelve international fighter pilots protecting a very valuable investment. They will lose face."

"True," Arashikaze admitted. "Which is why I'm telling your government that this is a down payment on the reassignment of Huntsmen and Huntresses to protect the Pacific Rim, along with an apology for our, shall we say, security breach that got all those pilots assigned to Asia killed or reassigned. While China does have its own equivalent of Huntsmen and Huntresses, they've been dealing with a large uptick on GRIMM attacks and air pirate hijackings in northeast China. They could use the help—and now they'll be getting it."

"Wait, you mean we're _Huntresses?_ And _Huntsmen?_ " Ruby gushed.

Arashikaze spread her hands. "Not officially." Ruby slumped. "Not yet."

Pyrrha stood. "Miss Arashikaze, permission to speak freely."

"I figured I'd already given that, but go ahead."

"Speaking of the, um, security breach…what happened to Leonardo Lionheart? Did he really have a heart attack?"

Arashikaze nodded solemnly. "I'm afraid so."

Yang raised her artificial arm. "Miss Arashikaze, permission to ask you to cut the bullshit."

"Yang," Qrow warned.

Arashikaze looked at her. She was not smiling. "What would you like me to tell you, Captain Xiao Long? That the heart attack story was to preserve the memory of a good man who had made a very poor decision, and ensure that Dorothy and Ruth Lionheart didn't have their names dragged through the mud? Or that I gave him the choice between public disgrace or suicide, and he wisely took the latter?"

Yang didn't back down. "Ma'am—with respect. I'm just tired of the lies and half-truths." She knew that she was doing what Raven had wanted her to do-ask questions-but in this case, Raven was right.

Arashikaze didn't respond, then pushed off the desk. "Captain, Winston Churchill once said that truth is so precious that she must have a bodyguard of lies. Sometimes I have to give you a ration of bullshit because I _can't_ tell you what's really happening. That's to preserve your life, your sanity, and our country, especially if you should get captured. We don't know if Salem takes prisoners, but I can't afford to take that chance." She stopped in front of Yang. "But I promise you this: if I can, I will tell you. Ozpin did have a tendency to get too secretive—for a very good reason that I cannot and will not tell you, because it was his story to tell. I will try not to do the same, if at all possible. You have my solemn promise on this. Okay?" She put out a hand.

"Okay," Yang agreed, and shook it.

Arashikaze stepped back. "One other thing. You might be tempted to switch on JINN and ask her questions. Don't. Besides it being a court-martial offense that will land you in Leavenworth—or worse—turning that computer on means that JINN will need to access our satellite communications network. I don't know if that signal can be detected. I was told it can't, but I was also told that no one knew where JINN's vault was, let alone how to access it." She regarded each of them in turn with a stare none of them could meet, except Qrow. "Assuming that Salem can detect those signals, she will send all kinds of GRIMM your way. And finally, JINN is not omnipotent." She looked at Ruby. "Unfortunately, she doesn't know where your mother is. I wish she did." She chuckled wanly. "She also doesn't know anything about me, including my actual name, so don't bother. Like I said, don't switch the damn thing on." She hesitated. "I suppose that's it. Any last questions?"

It was Blake who raised her hand again. "Ma'am…Adam Taurus." Yang looked at Blake worriedly. "Do you have any idea where he went?"

"He was tracked to South Korea, but we lost him in the mountains. We have no idea after that. I'm sorry, Captain Belladonna." Blake did not respond, but Yang noticed the Faunus' ears flick backwards.

There were no further questions, so Arashikaze took down the map, handed out the orders, and gave them one last smile. "All right, then. Enjoy your three weeks off. Hauptmann Schnee, rehab that leg. And…don't worry about expenses." She shrugged. "It's the least I can do. Just don't go crazy! Remember you've only got so much room in a travel pod or the cockpit." She locked her briefcase. "I'll be around, and you know how to contact me." She left the room without a backwards glance.

Ruby jumped to her feet, and to everyone's surprise, she ran after Arashikaze, catching up to her in the hallway. "Miss Arashikaze?"

"Yes, Captain Rose?"

"Listen…I found a clue about my mom. It's back in my room, but it's a fragment of a log we found at Kuroyuri. She made it that far." Ruby's voice became plaintive. "Will that help at all in finding her?"

Arashikaze put a hand on the pilot's shoulder; Ruby was actually a few inches taller. "Get it to me when I get back from Shanghai. I honestly don't have much at all on Summer Rose, but maybe…" Her voice trailed off.

"Thanks, Miss Arashikaze. I really appreciate it." Ruby gave a sort of half-bow and ran back to the room. Arashikaze watched her go, sighed, and continued on her way.

* * *

_Golyanovo Hotel_

_Vladivostok, Far East Russian Dead zone_

_28 June 2001_

Cinder Fall looked at her reflection in the shot glass. "Here's to Salem," she said with heavy irony, and knocked back the shot of liquor. It tasted like formaldehyde, but it was wet and it was alcoholic. And Cinder felt the need to get very drunk, even if it was homemade Russian shoe polish vodka.

It was her third night in Vladivostok, and she was, truth to be told, colossally bored. Lil' Miss Malachite was as good as her word, and if the beds in the Golyanovo dated to the 1960s, they were clean enough, and food and drink were paid for. She was, by the standards of the wild frontier city, an honored guest. Of course, as the hotel owner had told her that first night, if she left the hotel and struck out on her own, she'd probably be dead inside an hour.

Not that even the hotel was completely safe. The first morning, the head of the hotel's cleaning staff, a matronly, grumpy old woman, had told Cinder that she could by the Eternal make her own bed and clean her own room, and be damned smart about it or she would be sorry, guest or no guest. Cinder had promptly beaten her nearly to death, and there was no trouble after that, and a profuse apology from the owner. Cinder had sworn to herself a long time ago that she would not be treated like dirt by anyone. Never again.

"Bartender!" She held up the glass. "Could I just have the bottle?" The bartender nodded and slid the nearly full bottle of vodka to her.

"Scotch for me, if you have any." A hand reached out and pulled the passed-out drunk on the stool next to her onto the floor, then took the barstool himself. To Cinder's surprise, the bartender grunted, poured a fifth of Maker's Mark, and went to go fill another order. She chuckled at the newcomer. "Hello, Adam."

"Hello yourself." He was dressed in his black flight suit, the sword as usual at his side and the mask on his face, his red hair falling haphazardly over it and his horns. "Enjoying your stay?"

"Bored out of my mind," Cinder replied. "There's nothing to do but drink and watch the ocean."

"On the contrary," Adam told her. "There are some amazing churches here. The Cathedral of the Intercession is quite impressive."

"I'm fairly certain I would burst into flames if I entered a church." She poured herself more vodka. "Seeing the sights? I thought we were told we would die if we left the hotel, because it's not safe."

"It isn't," Adam said. He patted the hilt of his sword. "I find that people tend to be respectful when they see this." He pointed to his white mask. "And this. Besides, I suspect that Miss Malachite told us that to keep an eye on us. The main city seems to be safe enough."

"Hmm." Cinder toyed with the shot. "Well, it's better than sitting here." She tossed off the shot and poured another. "Though not tonight. Tonight I feel the need to get extremely drunk."

"You know what? I'll join you." He raised his whiskey and drank the rest, then signaled the bartender for a beer. "It has been a very long week."

"Hasn't it?" She turned on the barstool to face him. "The last time I saw you was over Beacon, however briefly. Are you still flying that forward-swept wing bird?"

"The Moonslice? Yes."

"I'd like to take a look at it sometime." Cinder eschewed the shotglass and started drinking from the bottle. "So how have things been? I heard Sienna Khan's dead. I assume you killed her."

"Yes. She was incompetent. I'm High Leader of the White Fang now." He snorted derisively. "A leader without a group. Most of the White Fang are either dead or imprisoned now; I had to leave them behind after we were ambushed at Ashiya. It will take me years to rebuild." He drank some of the beer. "How about you?"

"Oh, not too bad," Cinder mused. "I was shot down over Tsushima trying to kill Raven Branwen and get something for Salem. I assume most of my little group is either dead or back with Salem by now, who is probably very pissed at me for failing. I murdered a Japanese woman and stole her clothes and wallet, and I beat a old hag with a chair leg this morning for lipping off to me." She pulled some of her hair back, to expose the puckered scar tissue a little. Adam actually looked shocked. "And I got my head set on fire and lost my arm after that little bitch Ruby Rose rammed my F-22 with her F-16." She took another drink. "Other than that, I'm living the dream."

He laughed. "Aren't we a pair."

"Mmm." It might've been the vodka, but Cinder suddenly felt bold and reckless. "I guess it could be worse. I didn't lose a lover."

Adam stiffened, and his hand went to the hilt of the sword; for a minute, Cinder thought she might've pushed him too far. Then his hand came away and he shook his head with a smile. "Are you _trying_ to piss me off?"

"Not really. I was just wondering what your deal was with her—the Belladonna girl. That was all that seemed to matter for you, from what Hazel Rainart told me. She is pretty, I'll grant you that; I ran into her a few times at Beacon. But there's thousands of pretty Faunus girls just like her."

"You _are_ trying to piss me off." He finished the beer and got another. "Why the hell should I tell you anything?"

"I'm just making conversation." Cinder turned back to the bar. "I suppose the churches might be better company."

Adam leaned forward, running a finger over the beer bottle's stem. "Blake is beautiful," he said, so low she almost didn't hear him. "So full of life. Just…everything about her." He shrugged, at a loss for words.

Cinder gave him a knowing look. "Ah, you're in love. She was your first, wasn't she?"

She half-expected Adam to snap at her again, or even get up and leave. Possibly even take a swing at her. Instead, he nodded. "Yes. I suppose it's obvious." He took a drink. "You seem to speak from firsthand experience. Who was _your_ first, Cinder Fall?"

She took another drink as well. A pleasant buzz was starting to form. She decided to tell him; there was no harm in it. Adam Taurus didn't care, and neither did she. "A fighter pilot, if you can believe it. He taught me how to fly. It was my only escape from…" Just as quickly as it had come on, the buzz left. She didn't want to talk about that. There were some boxes of memory Cinder Fall had no desire to ever open again. "Never mind. But let's just say he didn't turn out to be Prince Charming." She slugged back another drink. The bottle was half-full now. "Fuck 'em."

Adam chuckled. "So you're not the one to go to for relationship advice."

Cinder leaned over to him. "Oh, I know a lot about relationships, trust me. They suck. And I can tell you something, Adam, if you need a pair of tits to wake up to in the morning, just hire a maid." She sniffed a laugh at her own joke. "What the hell did Belladonna leave you for, anyway?"

"She said I was out of control. That I'd lost focus on what the White Fang was supposed to stand for."

"Did you?"

Adam turned to her. She couldn't see his eyes through the mask, even through the eyeslits, but she was sure they were blazing. "In her _almighty_ opinion! She said we had to be a force for equality. That we had to show the humans we were as good as them. I said to hell with that!" He slammed down the beer in anger, and a few heads turned towards him. Adam visibly struggled to calm himself down; while he was under no illusions he would win any bar fight, Lil' Miss' generosity would evaporate very quickly if he started one. "We're better than humans." He angrily drank, then shrugged. "No offense."

"None taken." Cinder wasn't sure how human she was anymore. She looked down and uncurled the metal fist. The fact didn't really bother her. "So she left because you were more focused on taking what was yours by force rather than by hugs and singing kumbaya around the campfire." She barked a laugh. "You're better off without her."

"How dare you—"

Cinder ignored him. "Just get back out there, get back on that horse, and find yourself a new chick. And the White Fang?" She pointed at him around the bottle. "Fuck them too. They followed that striped dumbshit Sienna for how long? And when you decided to actually _do_ something instead of talk about it, they went to pieces and gave up." That was unfair to Sienna Khan, but Cinder found herself getting angry _and_ drunk, and was fine with that as well. "Now Salem…she's a good boss."

Adam shook his head, grinning. "And yet she's left you in this hovel to die."

"I did fail her. I suppose I can't blame her for that." She drank. "So I didn't kill Raven and recover Salem's little toy. Big fucking deal. I'll find Ruby and her damn flight, and kill them. No problem."

He laughed again. "You're drunk."

"Not yet. Working on it."

"I don't think I could be a henchman," he remarked.

Cinder glared at him. "I'm not a fucking hench. Fuck you. I'm Salem's right hand."

"Isn't that the very definition of a henchman?" Adam was starting to enjoy this. He hadn't appreciated what Cinder had said about Blake.

She reached out and, to his surprise, poked him in the chest. "Oh yeah? Well, I may be getting drunk in a nowhere bar in a dead zone, but I'm not sitting here maundering over an ex-girlfriend, like some lovestruck teenager over his first piece of ass!" She leaned back and finished the bottle. "Makes no sense."

"You know what makes no sense?" He leaned against the bar, that maddening grin still on his face. "The fact that you're supposedly Salem's right hand, but so far you've gotten shot down twice—first by some nugget kid fresh out of flight school, and then by a bandit chieftess. Not a good record."

Cinder turned purple with rage. "You son of a bitch. For one thing, Ruby Rose is the daughter of one of the best fighter pilots ever to strap on a F-16. Second, Raven Branwen didn't shoot me down—Pyrrha Nikos did."

"Fair enough. How old are you?" Adam asked.

"What's that got to do with it?" Cinder shot back. Amazingly, no one at the crowded bar was paying them the least attention, except the bartender—and that was only to slide a beer down to Cinder, figuring he'd be better off getting her passed out as soon as possible.

"I figure we're about the same age. Which means we've been flying for about the same amount of time." He smirked. "I've never been shot down—and I took on both Blake in a F-14 and her friend Yang in a F-15."

"When Ruby Rose got me," Cinder smoldered, "I had just finished nearly getting killed by Pyrrha the first time, then barely escaped getting killed by some idiot Frenchman in a Mirage 2000. Excuse me for not being able to get all three. Though technically, I did." She was beginning to slur her words. She pulled the top off the beer and took a drink. "You know what your problem is, Taurus?" He shook his head, amused. "You haven't had a real woman."

He hadn't been expecting that. " _What?"_

She was the one smirking now. "You heard me."

"I assure you—"

"You know, I was briefed on you before the whole Beacon caper. You were banging Blake Belladonna when she was sixteen. You were eighteen. Teenagers. And I bet you haven't been with anyone since."

Adam actually blushed. "Shut up."

Cinder nodded knowingly. She slid off the barstool. She was wearing a casual button-up blouse and blue jeans—whatever Malachite had found for her—but it flattered her figure. She leaned close to him. "Maybe that's your problem. You're all backed up."

He was flustered. Cinder was breathing vodka fumes on him, but he found himself staring at her chest. "I…I don't like humans."

"We're all built the same." Cinder was on the offensive, and drunk though she might be, she was enjoying it. Adam reminded her of the arrogant people she used to serve in a previous life. Back then, she could do nothing, but now, she could press him, force him to run off, bully him. His left hand rested on the hilt of the sword, but as close as she was, he wouldn't be able to draw it. "How about it, High Leader?" She licked her lips. "Want to find out?"

He pushed her back—a little. "Go away. I can't do this."

"Why? Because you still want the little kitty?" She leaned close again, even closer. "Why pet the kitty when you can ride the lightning?" Cinder stifled a laugh. He was going to run. She could feel it, the same feeling when she had someone in her gunsight, that thrill of victory she'd missed.

So she was taken by surprise when he suddenly grabbed her and crushed his lips to hers. Her eye widened, then fluttered closed. It had been awhile since someone had kissed Cinder Fall.

They just as suddenly withdrew, and Adam snickered at her. "You weren't expecting that, were you?"

"No," Cinder admitted. "But I kinda liked it." She ran a hand up his thigh. "Your place or mine?"

Just like that, she was back on the offensive. Adam suddenly looked down. "You don't want me," he murmured; if they hadn't been so close, she wouldn't have heard him. "I'm…my face."

She reached up and lifted the mask a little before he stopped her, but it was enough to see a scar, distorted by age, but a burn scar not unlike some of her own. Cinder shook her head. "I have scars too. Worse than yours. If you can handle mine…I can handle yours."

Adam finished his beer, kissed her again, and growled, "My place." He took her hand and headed for the stairs, Cinder laughing behind him.

Neither saw the short woman with mismatched eyes watching them.


	4. Rebel Yell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cinder, after a night of passion with Adam, gets called to Lil' Miss' airfield. Someone is waiting for her there, someone from Cinder's past.
> 
> Meanwhile, Rissa Arashikaze runs into some people from *her* past.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally time to get back in the air in this chapter, though we have just a bit more to do with Rissa Arashikaze (probably the second to last time she shows up in this story arc; I'm trying not to overuse my OC) to get a new character into the fic. None of the main characters are in this chapter, actually.

_Shanghai Pudong International Airport_

_Shanghai, United Republic of China_

_29 June 2001_

"Good morning, Director Arashikaze," Director of Intelligence Yu Zhang bowed. "Welcome to China. It is good to see you again."

Rissa Arashikaze returned the bow with equal depth as one of Zhang's men closed the door behind her. They were in a plush, but secure, meeting room in Shanghai's sprawling international terminal. "And you, Director Zhang. How is your family?"

"Fine. My daughter Xiu starts college this year. And she's found a boyfriend. So much for my grand plan to put her in a monastery." He laughed and motioned to the other man. "This is Wang Ziaoming, my assistant." Arashikaze exchanged bows with him. Whereas Yu Zhang was built like a wrestler and his body strained the Savile Row suit he wore, Ziaoming Wang was more how the layman pictured a government official: average height, attractive rather than handsome, short cut hair. "He's been read in, so feel free to speak freely in front of him."

"Hello, Director Arashikaze," Wang greeted her. "I hope you will find your stay enjoyable."

"Thank you, Mr. Wang."

"And now that the usual bullshit is out of the way…" Zhang unknotted his tie, went to a sideboard, and opened it. "You still drink bourbon, Rissa?"

Her eyes widened. "Good God, Yu, it's ten in the morning."

"Which means it's happy hour somewhere." She shrugged, he laughed, and poured her a glass, and himself one as well. Wang declined. He set the tumbler in front of her, sat in one of the lavishly upholstered chairs, and put his feet up. Arashikaze sat and opened her briefcase, shaking her head at him. Yu Zhang was born and raised in Hong Kong, went to school at Oxford, and had returned to China in the utter chaos of the Chinese War of Reunification. Somehow, he'd ended up controlling the National Security Bureau; there were a handful of people who knew the details of that journey, and Arashikaze was one of them. He was married to a former supermodel, drove Italian sports cars, and drank Western liquor. The laid-back style, she knew, masked a brilliant mind and a nature that could be ruthless when it suited him. She also knew that there were graves scattered across China, filled with men and women who thought they knew and trusted Yu Zhang. "So what have you brought me?"

Arashikaze handed him the itineraries and makeup of Ruby and Norn Flights. Zhang looked through them, nodding on occasion. "Yang Xiao Long?" His eyebrows went up. "Can she be trusted after what happened at Vytal Flag a few months ago? She shot down one of her own people."

"She was set up."

Wang looked at Yang's picture. "She doesn't look Chinese at all."

"Her family originally came over during the Taiping Rebellion to build the transcontinental railroad," Arashikaze explained. "They kept the family name, but there's been so much intermarriage that she doesn't have Chinese features."

"You'll note our friend here doesn't look very Japanese," Zhang told Wang.

"Because she married a Japanese man," Wang replied. He smiled at Arashikaze. "I did my research, Director."

"Whatever Yu tells you about me, it's probably lies." She waited until Zhang had finished looking through the reports. While it was true that Arashikaze had married a Japanese man, it wasn't where her name came from. "Does it meet with your approval?"

"It does. It's an excellent group of fighter pilots. I wish there were a few more non-Americans on the team, but I suppose we'll make do."

"There are three more pilots we'll add later. All of them will be veterans of the Battle of Beacon. I'll fax you their dossiers later." She sipped at the bourbon. It ignited a fireball in her chest and she put it down. It _was_ too early for booze.

"Very good." He set aside the reports. "Now then—the real reason."

Arashikaze flicked her eyes towards Wang, but decided that this was Zhang's turf, and she had to trust him. "JINN," she said. "Ruby Flight will be carrying JINN's interface module with them to Europe."

"And you will provide access?"

"No. But I will provide a copy."

Zhang smiled. "I would prefer direct access."

"I'm sure you would." She smiled back.

"Our deal was direct access."

"No, it wasn't."

Zhang sighed. He tapped a finger on the dossiers. "Then we may have an issue with this escort mission for our inaugural Silk Road rail service."

"No issue." She pulled out a piece of paper with the White House's letterhead on it. "President Shawcross would like to extend an invitation for your President to attend a summit later this year, around Thanksgiving. There may also be some assistance coming with your Three Gorges Dam project."

Zhang took the paper and scanned it. "This is something we've wanted for awhile." She nodded. "My understanding was that President Shawcross was facing impeachment over the revelation of the orbital bombardment platform."

"He'll beat it," Arashikaze replied confidently.

"Hmm." Zhang read the paper again. "And you'll still give us a copy of JINN? The United States is offering much and demanding comparatively little." She nodded again. His smile returned. "I think we have a deal, Rissa." He put out a hand. She rose slightly and shook it. "Will you be on the train?"

"Sadly, no. I need to get back to Greenbrier."

"Of course." He paused. "A bad business with Air Vice Marshal Lionheart. I was saddened to hear about his passing." Zhang took a drink. "We have an unconfirmed report that Adam Taurus was sighted in Vladivostok. He's a guest of Lil' Miss Malachite."

"She's welcome to him. But I'll keep them in mind."

"Then I suppose that's all." He finished his bourbon and stood. "Dinner tonight, Rissa? I know Jiao would love to see you." He grinned. "And she still makes a mean peppered steak."

"I'd be honored, even if my stomach won't." They laughed. She closed her briefcase, shook hands with Wang, and left.

* * *

Zhang watched her walk into the terminal through the large picture window that looked down onto the terminal floor. "An amazing woman."

"My understanding is that you had several adventures together," Wang put in.

"None of which I can tell you. Not even you. Let's just say the Maidens isn't the only secret we know about."

"I will get back to the office and expedite Ruby and Norn Flights' visas." Wang bowed. Zhang absently waved, lost in thought, as his subordinate left.

Wang did not return immediately to the NSB's office in downtown Shanghai. He instead walked to a row of payphones, put in some coins, and dialed a number.

* * *

Rissa Arashikaze didn't see Wang, but strode instead towards the entrance to the international terminal. She hadn't gotten much sleep, and was looking forward to settling into her hotel.

"Rissa Arashikaze?"

Arashikaze turned slowly towards the voice, her fingers sliding slightly forward on the briefcase handle. She did not expect to end up eyes level with an older woman, with gray hair tied back in a long braid. Her skin was the color of worn teakwood; she was slightly stooped over, leaning on a cane. One silver eye stared back at her; the other was covered by an eyepatch.

"Maria Calavera?" Arashikaze said in amazement.

* * *

_Golyanovo Hotel_

_Vladivostok, Far East Russian Dead zone_

_28 June 2001_

"Well." Cinder Fall stretched from head to toe, feeling better than she had in quite awhile. "That was unexpected. Perhaps the question you should be asking, Adam, is why Blake Belladonna left _you._ "

Adam Taurus stared at the ceiling. "You're the first…since her."

"Really?" She ran her fingers through his hair—her real ones. "Truly, the female gender has been missing you greatly."

Adam sighed. "I shouldn't have done that."

Cinder leaned across and kissed him. "But we did, twice, and I quite enjoyed it." Her fingers went to his lips. "You're pretty good with these…" They strayed further down. "And this."

"Please…don't." He gently took her hands away.

Cinder frowned. "Still pining for the kitty." She flopped back onto the pillows. "Oh well. At least I made you forget about her for one night." She brushed her hair back over the mutilated side of her face.

"Don't," Adam told her. He rolled over and pulled back her hair. "You should be proud of these scars. They prove you've survived."

"So why do you hide yours?" she countered. She touched the wrinkled scars across his left eye, the letters SDC forever marked there. The eye still existed, but she knew he had no sight in it; the sclera was blood red, the iris a dead gray. They were more alike than either wanted to admit, she supposed. Of course, she'd killed the only person she'd ever loved; Adam, fool that he was, still loved Blake Belladonna.

"They're a mark of shame," Adam replied.

"Mine scare children." Cinder pushed the covers off of him. Neither wore a thing. "At least our scars don't go below the shoulders."

Despite himself, Adam felt his desire for the woman in bed with him rekindle. Whatever ruin half of her face might be, and despite the black metal of her artificial arm, she was quite simply beautiful. He found himself comparing Cinder to Blake. "Oh, hell," he murmured, and kissed her.

"That's more like it." Cinder reached for him, only to be interrupted by insistent knocking against the door. "Dammit!" she snarled, and raised her voice. "Go the fuck away!"

The voice that responded was heavily accented, but authoritative. "I am very sorry to disturb you, Miss Fall, but Miss Malachite wants to speak with you immediately."

"Right now?" Cinder groaned. "But something just came up!" Adam muffled his laughter at her pun.

"Yes, Miss Fall. I am instructed to bring you by force if necessary. Both of you." The voice sounded dubious at that; Adam's skill with the sword was well known.

Cinder looked at Adam. Both rolled their eye. "All right. Let me get dressed." She rolled out of bed, found her underwear in the pile of clothes scattered haphazardly from the door to the nightstand, and began to dress.

* * *

The Malachite man brought them both to Vladivostok's airfield. A cool breeze swept across the field, but the sky was otherwise clear and warm. A handful of aircraft were on the tarmac; Cinder knew Malachite owned far more, even accounting for the losses she had taken to Reaper Flight over Sakhalin. There was always the odd chance that Japan, China or the United States would hit Vladivostok with an airstrike, which was why Lil' Miss was far more careful on choosing her targets than either the Torchwick Gang or the Branwen Tribe.

The head of the Malachite Gang was waiting at the edge of the tarmac as the car pulled up. She took a drag on a cigarette, held daintily in a holder. "Hello there, Cinder," Lil' Miss greeted her as Cinder got out of the car. "I am sorry to disturb you—both of you. I declare that I never thought _you_ two would hook up."

Adam had his mask back on, so they couldn't see him raise an eyebrow. "You knew?"

Lil' Miss laughed. "Darling, there's nothing in my town that I don't know about. Now I got no problem with you too having a little toss in the sack; in fact, I reckon it's good for both of you. And maybe you can get back to it tonight. For now, though…I got your information—and yours too, Adam." She blew smoke into the air. "Just got a call from one of my folks down in China. Lil' Miss always delivers."

"For what I paid you, you'd better," Adam warned.

Lil' Miss just laughed. "Sonny, don't threaten me when you don't hold the cards. You paid me fair and square, and I don't mind in the least taking Schnee money from anyone. But just remember that I'm the one who rules here. Not that sweet little ass of yours." She turned back to Cinder. "Anyhow, though I can't promise you'll be pleased with the info, word is that Ruby Flight and Norn Flight will be escorting the inaugural run of the Silk Road bullet train, from Xi'an to Almaty. They're headed west, hon, which I imagine means they're headed for—"

"—Europe," Cinder finished.

"They won't get in with the embargo," Adam said.

"They'll find a way. Europe can't control all of their airspace."

"I'll leave you two to figure that out." Lil' Miss took the cigarette out of its holder, dropped it, and stubbed it out. "Kinda funny to see, really. Cinder, you want revenge for getting all burned up. Adam, you want revenge for your liitle Faunus girl leaving you." She smiled. "Who needs soap operas when I've got you two? Damn shame you'll be leaving me. It's not often I get customers who triple my business." She suddenly whistled. "I do hope you'll forgive the drama, but I _so_ like a dramatic entrance."

There was a truck parked on the tarmac, which partially blocked it. The truck started and backed up, slowly revealing a black-painted British Aerospace Hawk 200. That was less troubling than the girl in the pink-trimmed, white flight suit that stood in front of it, a sardonic smirk on her face and her hands behind her back.

"Neo Politan," Cinder grunted.

"Hiii," Neo half-sang, with a wave.

"What the hell do you want?" Cinder asked. Neo said nothing, merely walked forward. Her hands came out from behind her back, and put a black bowler with a red ribbon on her head. Her smirk turned predatory.

"I'm afraid I don't understand," Adam said. "You said you were heading east, Neo. You were here the whole time?"

It was Malachite that answered. "Oh, Miss Neo arrived two days ago, looking for Miss Cinder there. I was going to tell her you'd moved on, but she had a lot of dough to change my mind." She winked at Cinder. "More dough than you brought, Cinder. So I think I'm going to give her the other part of what she wants."

"Which is?" Adam asked.

"Revenge," Cinder said, watching Neo. The short girl's hands were empty, but Neo Politan was a professional assassin; there was no telling what she had stashed on her. "Which is misplaced. I didn't kill your boss, Neo. If you want revenge, take it up with 'Little Red.'"

"True," Neo replied. "You didn't kill my dum-dum. Ruby Rose did. But you set up the circumstances in which Roman died. So before I kill Ruby…slowly…I'm going to kill you."

Out of the corner of one eye, Cinder saw Adam's hand go to the hilt of his katana. So did Malachite. "Ah, ah!" She waggled a finger. "Neo has agreed to give me dinner and a show, so you two are going to settle this in the air."

"With what?" Cinder snapped. "I don't have an aircraft."

"I told you I'd provide you with something," Malachite replied. She pointed to the other side of the Hawk. It was painted black as well, with red and yellow racing stripes. Like all of Malachite's aircraft, it wore no markings.

"Great. A Sabre. A F-86," Cinder sighed. "Not much of a show. Neo's Hawk is two generations ahead of that antique."

"I'll have you know that 'antique' is one of the best maintained birds in my fleet," Malachite insisted. "I'm not going to make it that easy." She stabbed her cigarette holder at Cinder. "And just to make it more even, we'll take the missiles off the Hawk."

" _What?"_ Neo shouted.

Malachite only chuckled. "Oh, now come on, dearie. That would've been too easy. Guns only sounds like lots of fun." She laughed again, this time at the fuming Cinder. "So I suggest you get your ass in that Sabre, Cinder, or I'll just have my men shoot you. I'd hate to do that, because then I'd have to refund Neo some of her money…but I will." She took out another cigarette. "You're supposed to be this hotshot pilot, Cinder, so let's see your cards."

"Fuck," Cinder commented, brushed past Neo, and walked towards the Sabre. To her surprise, Adam followed her. They did a quick preflight. Malachite hadn't lied; it was in exquisite shape. "A modified F-86F," Adam commented. "Later wings with slats; that should help you in close-range combat." He looked at the nose. "Four cannon ports. This has four twenty millimeters rather than the six fifty caliber machine guns."

"At least I can kill the bitch that much faster, then." One of Malachite's men brought her a flight suit, G-suit, parachute, and helmet. Cinder decided not to worry about modesty and stripped to her underwear, putting on the equipment quickly. Then she mounted the ladder and climbed into the cockpit, which was comfortable enough. The bubble canopy would give her actually better visibility as the Hawk, at least, and the cockpit had been updated with a modern HUD, even if the instruments were still mostly 1950s vintage. Adam helped her strap in. "You have her in speed," he told her, "but she's slightly more maneuverable. You're fairly well matched." He tapped her helmet. "Well…good luck."

"Thanks." He went back down the ladder and the crew chief came up, running her through a very abbreviated checklist. Cinder wasn't too worried; luckily, the F-86 was a pilot's aircraft, and flying was flying. _Yes, tell yourself that,_ she thought. _That gotch-eyed whore in the Hawk has been flying hers for a few weeks. You've never even seen a F-86 until today. Well, at least I got laid before I got killed._ Cinder put those thoughts out of her head. She was going to win, and scatter Neo Politan's remains across the Russian countryside.

She started the engine up as the crew chief took away the ladder, and she closed the canopy. The Hawk was already moving, Neo cheerfully giving Cinder the finger as she taxied past to the far runway. After some fits and starts, Cinder followed to the nearest one. There were no instructions from the tower: the fight would be on the moment both left the runway.

Cinder saw the Hawk's afterburner ignite, and Neo accelerated down the runway; Cinder smiled, because Neo, in her haste to get into the air, had already made a mistake. She advanced the throttle herself, felt the kick of afterburner on the Sabre, and hurtled into the air. Neo was already grabbing altitude, but Cinder smoothly dropped in behind her and opened fire. "Well, _that_ was easy," she remarked, and pulled the trigger. The cannon thumped away, every fifth round a tracer as Cinder marched the shells towards the Hawk.

But Neo was not so easily killed. At the first tracer, she broke left, ruining Cinder's sight picture. She followed Neo into the turn, but the Hawk tightened the turn, even after Cinder tried a high-speed yo-yo to keep the little fighter in her sight. Neo dived away, then rolled out, then climbed, catching Cinder by surprise. The Hawk only had one gun, but it was a harder hitting 30mm Aden. It took all of Cinder's skill to twist through the lethal cone of shells. She dived as well, leveling out just above the trees, but now the Hawk was behind her.

"Let's see how bad you want this," Cinder remarked. She got even lower, enough that her wake bent the tops of the fir trees. Neo was game and followed her down. Cinder used the mirrors set into the canopy bow to watch the Hawk. It closed the distance, easily within range, but Cinder nodded. _She's putting her pipper on the back of my head. Neo wants this to be the perfect kill._ She waited a precious few seconds, dividing her attention between the ground only feet below the Sabre and the Hawk behind her, the waiting causing her stomach to knot up. Then, finally, Cinder could wait no longer. She firewalled the throttle and yanked the stick back into her stomach.

The F-86 stood on its tail, catching Neo by surprise just as her finger pulled the trigger. She climbed as well, but Cinder rolled out, going upside down and let Neo fly into her gunsight. At the last second, the assassin figured out what Cinder was doing and turned hard, just enough—but now Cinder was behind her again. Neo had lost energy in the climb and turn, but Cinder still was going at full throttle; she pushed the throttle back and quickly remembered where the speedbrake handle was, opening the squares of metal on the rear fuselage a little to slow down. She abruptly realized Neo was also slowing down, and now the two were practically on top of each other. Cinder rolled hard, only to see that Neo had done the same.

The old F-86 and the new Hawk were now rolling over each other in a constant spin, sky and forest changing in moments. Cinder looked down and then up out of the canopy, only to see Neo looking right back at her, close enough for Cinder to see that the assassin had used black laces in her white flight boots. Now it would be who made the first mistake, which would either result in one of them getting out front, hitting the ground, or colliding with the other.

It was Neo. She watched her speed go dangerously low; if Cinder was unfamiliar with the Sabre, so was Neo. As a tree swept past her nose, Neo swallowed nervously and pushed up the throttle just a little. It was enough. Cinder caught the slight acceleration, rolled hard out of the spin, and dropped in behind the Hawk, so close that she could count the rivets in the other fighter's tail; she grabbed the stick with both hands to keep from being flung into the ground by the jetwash. A slight touch of the flaps; Cinder felt the buffet of a stall coming on, then climbed, rolled again, and settled in behind the Hawk at a less suicidal range. Her gunsight was on the narrow back of the other fighter. Cinder's finger tightened on the trigger…and then relaxed.

"Neo, I know you can hear me," she radioed. At least she _hoped_ Neo could hear her. "Listen. I'm not going to kill you as a party game for Fatso down there. You're not the only one with a grudge against Ruby Rose. We both want that girl dead, so let's quit fighting each other, land, and talk about how we kill her together." She paused. "Or you'll never get revenge for your precious dum-dum, though I guarantee you'll meet him a lot sooner than either of you thought. Deal?"

A second went past. "Deal," Neo said, then rolled her wings level. Cinder thought about gunning her down anyway, but she was short on allies and long on enemies. Adam Taurus might have developed some feelings for her, but she had long ago learned not to trust anyone. Cinder dropped back and took up position on Neo's wing. "You have the lead," she told her.

* * *

"Well, well, well." Lil' Miss Malachite leaned against the hood of the car as Neo and Cinder walked towards her, both shaking from the exertion of the fight. "You know, I oughta kill both of you for suddenly deciding to team up, and I didn't particularly like that comment about my weight, Cinder." She patted her copious stomach. "But y'know, that was a fine dogfight, and God knows how much money the casinos made today."

"You're kidding," Cinder said. "You _recorded_ that?"

"Oh, I admit I didn't get everything, but there's cameras all through that forest. I knew you two would put on a show, so I dropped some hints to the casinos here in town that there might be something damn interesting this afternoon." Malachite laughed. "So I've made a pile of rhino off you two. Enough to not have your kneecaps shot off. So how's about it? Y'all gonna go after this Ruby person, and the Faunus girl?"

"Partners?" Cinder looked at Adam.

He smiled back. "Why not."

Neo let out a high giggle. "This is gonna be _fun!"_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Cinder vs. Neo fight is based loosely on an actual dogfight between Ralph Parr and an unknown (but possibly Soviet "honcho") MiG-15 pilot during the Korean War. Originally, I was going to have the two ladies duke it out in old WWII fighters, but I decided against it-where would Lil' Miss get old warbirds from? I was pushing it as it was with what Cinder *does* get.


	5. Touch of Gray

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Weiss begins rehabbing her leg, the pilots find out they have a passenger coming along. 
> 
> Meanwhile, Cinder's faction returns to Yamantau...and Salem is not pleased.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A somewhat short chapter this time around, to get Maria Calavera into the team and catch up with Salem and Company. The next chapter or two will be a somewhat filler chapters, as Weiss recuperates, but I also want to do a little background on Maria as the GRIMM Reaper (moving that part up from when it's discussed in canon), and do a little characterization, maybe work on some stuff between Blake and Yang, Ren and Nora, and Ruby and Oscar. Might even throw some stuff in from "Atlas" (aka Europe) with Whitley, and Pietro Polendina. We'll see. But we will get to the big air battle on the Silk Road Express within three or four chapters, and it will be pretty much straight up action until Ruby and Norn Flights reach Europe.
> 
> So I hope you don't get bored, but this is supposed to be more than just constant action...

_Naval Hospital Yokosuka_

_Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan_

_29 June 2001_

"Captain Schnee? I'm Dr. Darren Moran." The tall, heavyset man put out a hand. He wore Navy khakis and the gold leaves of a lieutenant commander, as well as the gold wings of a pilot. "I'll be in charge of your physical therapy." He put out a hand, and Weiss shook it once, in the European fashion. "Do you want to stay on your crutches, or would you like a wheelchair?"

"The crutches, please," Weiss answered. Logically, she knew she should accept the wheelchair. Even the walk from the car to the physical therapy wing of the hospital had made her somewhat good leg hurt and her shoulders ache. As a Schnee, however, Weiss was not going to show weakness. Her honor still meant that much, at least. Next to her, Ruby looked worried.

"You sure? Okay, Captain. You're the boss." He led the way down the hallway. Weiss noticed the small limp. "Doctor, are _you_ all right?" she couldn't resist asking.

He turned and smiled, then lifted the cuff of his left pants leg. His leg ended in a metal joint and a prosthetic shoe. "Had a bad ejection after my F-14 flamed out on approach to the boat. I punched out, but my foot got caught under the instrument panel. Took it right off." He gave a shrug. "I got lucky. My backseater didn't get out."

"Oh," Weiss said, more than a little taken aback. In an odd way, however, it was comforting, because Moran would be able to sympathize with her. "Excuse my poor manners, Doctor…in more ways than one." She nodded towards Ruby. "My friend, Captain Ruby Rose."

"Oh, hey." He shook hands with Ruby as well. "I've heard of you." Ruby beamed. "Are you the one they call the Mad Rammer?" Weiss bit her lip as her friend's face fell.

"Yep," Ruby replied tightly. Moran realized he'd committed a faux pas and continued to lead them down the hall. He opened the door, to reveal a room of exercise machines. "Oh dear," Weiss said. "A torture chamber."

"Afraid so," Moran answered, "but it'll get you back on your feet. In fact, those legs will be stronger than ever before." He led her through the room, pointing out the various equipment and how she would be using them. "And we're going to work you like a frigging dog," Moran grinned. "Normally it would take three months for you to get that leg working, but you've indicated you want to do it in three weeks. So you're going to be _very_ good friends with everything in here."

" _Wunderlich,"_ Weiss groaned.

He led her into another room, with comfortable looking beds. "The nice thing is, you'll get a sweet massage after you're done. Should keep those muscles nice and loose."

"You know what _really_ happens in places like this," Ruby whispered to Weiss. "Happy endings for Weiss." She turned a glacial stare on Ruby.

Moran laughed. "Well, if that's what you want, I know of—er, heard of, a good place down in Yokosuka town. It'll cost you about 10,000 yen though," he joked.

"I most certainly do not!" Weiss insisted, and smacked Ruby in the shin with her crutch. "Quit listening to your sister, Ruby."

Moran laughed again and led them to the next room, which held a large swimming pool. It was warm to the touch, and smelled of eucalyptus rather than chlorine. "This I will like," Weiss said. She was a decent swimmer.

"Swimming is good exercises for your legs," Moran told them. "And it's big enough to have some friends over, if you like."

"I don't know," Ruby said. "Yang might try to drown you…that's what she does to me. And I bet Blake hates water, being a cat and all."

The opposite door to the pool opened before Moran reached it; to their surprise, standing in the door was the dimunitive form of Rissa Arashikaze, business suit and all, though unusually, she looked a bit harried. "Doctor," she said tiredly, "I truly hate to interrupt, but I need to borrow Captains Outrageous there." She pointed at the two women. Moran opened his mouth to protest, but Arashikaze held up an ID. "Very well," he said, not in a friendly fashion. To Weiss, he said more gently, "We'll have some paperwork for you to sign. Do you want to start today or in the morning?"

Weiss checked her watch. It was a little after noon. "Today, please."

"I'll be in my office."

"Doctor, is there someplace secure we can talk?" Arashikaze asked.

He shrugged. "I suppose here would be fine."

She looked around and nodded. "Captain Rose, would you mind gathering your flight and Norn Flight? I understand they're on base."

"Yes, ma'am." Yang, Blake and the others had come to Yokosuka with Weiss for moral support, and to check out the carrier berths and one of the largest base exchanges in the Far East. "They should be still in the car." She took off running. Moran spared Arashikaze a look reserved for spies and other people that interfered with his job and left.

Weiss slowly eased herself down to sit in a lounge chair, fending off Arashikaze's attempts to help. "I wish I wasn't wearing this cast," she sighed. "Soaking my feet sounds really good right now." She looked up as Arashikaze ushered an older woman into the room. A much older woman, her hair completely gray, bent over and using a cane, one eye hidden behind an eyepatch. Weiss wanted to ask who it was, but decided to hold her questions for the rest of the flight. While they waited, the older woman smiled and exchanged a nod with Weiss, while Arashikaze busied herself checking the room. Weiss supposed it was habit, though it was highly doubtful a pool at a naval hospital in Japan would be bugged—and the humidity in the room would make it hard on electronic objects to begin with.

Ruby was back with the two flights soon enough. "Oh, a pool!" Blake exclaimed, and went over to put her hand in it. "It's so warm! I haven't been swimming in forever."

"Wait, you _like_ water?" Ruby asked.

Blake flicked water at her. "Cat _Faunus,_ " she snapped. "Moron."

"Yeah, moron!" Yang slapped her sister in the back of the head, eliciting a spate of very bad words from Ruby.

"Enough!" Arashikaze's words ricocheted around the pool like a gunshot. Yang instantly straighted up and put her hands behind her back, the same she would have if Taiyang had yelled at her. Arashikaze stalked back to the gathered flights. When they had met her before, she had usually looked placid at worst, pleasant normally, even if there was always that slight tinge of menace about her. This time, she seemed rather upset. "I'll make this brief. The Chinese are willing to play ball. They will expedite your visas and you will be escorting the train as planned. There has, however, been a slight, ah, addition to your cargo."

"I resent that," the old woman said.

"I don't care!" Arashikaze exploded, then got a hold of herself. "All right." She pointed to the elder woman. "This is Maria Calavera. Any of you ever heard of her?"

"My God," Pyrrha said in awe. "The GRIMM Reaper."

"The same," Arashikaze said before Maria could speak. "I'll let her talk about herself all she likes later, which she undoubtedly will. In any case, she'll be accompanying you as far as Incirlik."

"Further than that," Maria added.

Arashikaze began massaging her temples. "Maria…no. The embargo is temporary. You have been _specifically_ banned from Europe. You're on 20 no-fly lists."

"For what?" Nora wanted to know.

"I don't know," Maria said guilelessly. "I'm just a harmless old woman."

"Like hell," Arashikaze snarled. "How about you stealing the YF-16 at the Paris Air Show and embarrassing the hell out of the French?"

"They were being arrogant assholes!"

"Or the time you took a prototype Mirage 2000 for a joyride?"

"Again, they were being arrogant—"

"And let's not forget your get-rich-quick pistachio smuggling ring in Corsica!" Arashikaze interrupted her. "Do you just have it in for the Republic of France? I know of at least one French Army brigadier general who has threatened to kill you if she ever sees you again!"

Maria waved it off. "Cordovin's full of hot air. Besides, the smuggling was never proven." She leaned on her cane and grinned at Arashikaze. "But since you're airing _my_ dirty laundry, maybe I'll air some of yours. Like that time I played getaway driver in Dubai when you were going after that Russian terrorist?"

"Shut up," Arashikaze snarled. "That's classified and you know it."

"Has the Emir let you back in the country since you shot that hotel to shit?"

Arashikaze suddenly grabbed Maria and threw her in the pool. Pyrrha screamed and leapt in the pool after her, in full service uniform, but Maria—who was dressed casually—treaded water and paddled back to the side of the pool before Pyrrha could help. "That's classified," Arashikaze repeated, turning a baleful glare on the fighter pilots. "You didn't hear any of that. Don't believe half of what this old bitch tells you."

"Ha!" Maria crowed, leaning against the side of the pool.

With noticeable effort, Arashikaze fought down her anger. "In any case, in…ugh…payment of some past debts I have to Maria, I have graciously allowed her to accompany you to Incirlik. After that, she's on her own."

Ruby raised a hesitant hand. "Um…how is she going to get there? Is she going to fly?" She looked very doubtful at that.

"Oh, no," Arashikaze replied, though she was looking daggers at Maria, "she's blind in one eye and can barely see out of the other. I wouldn't trust her to fly a flight simulator." She looked back to Ruby. "And I'm glad you asked, Captain Rose, because she'll be flying with you. Your F-16C will be temporarily replaced by a D model. She'll be flying backseat." Her attention went back to Maria. "Where she will touch nothing. In fact, if you decide to ziptie her wrists and ankles, I am _totally_ fine with that, and will even provide the zipties." The CIA woman shook her head. "I'll have _Crescent Rose_ flown to Incirlik for you."

"Why me?" Ruby wanted to know. The F-16D's flight characteristics were not really any different than the C model, other than being slightly shorter ranged. Still, she was used to the C model now, and had never flown with a backseater.

"Because I can easily get a F-16D from Misawa. Everyone else here either can't get a two-seater in time, or they fly something that doesn't have a two-seat version. Or I don't consider them experienced enough to handle whatever chicanery Maria can get up to." Blake didn't feel like mentioning that the Navy could fairly easily provide a standard F-14 with a backseat, and best of all, it wouldn't have flight controls. But that would mean volunteering to give up _Gambol Shroud,_ and she wasn't about to do that. Ruby was on her own this time.

"Swell," Ruby grumped.

"It's an order, Captain…and I'm sorry." Rissa watched as Maria hauled herself out of the pool, with a little help from Pyrrha. "I'll make sure to have your uniform replaced, Major. As for you, Maria, after this, we're even. Understand? Start spouting off about stuff that's top secret and I'll have you killed, I swear to God, Buddha and any other deity that might be out there."

"Fine, fine," Maria said, and walked, sopping wet, to Ruby. "Don't worry, Captain. I'm the soul of caution nowadays." She peered closer at the younger woman's face. "Huh. You have silver eyes."

Arashikaze shot Maria a warning glance, then looked at the rest of them. "That's it for now. Your other cargo remains a secret, one that Miss Calavera—"

" _Colonel_ Calavera," Maria insisted.

"— _retired_ Colonel Calavera," Arashikaze added, "does not need to know about. Any questions? The other pilots will be joining you in two weeks." There were no questions, so Arashikaze rubbed her eyes. "I apologize for our argument. Best of luck. I may meet you in Incirlik." She turned on one heel and was gone.

"Wow. She was super pissed," Yang observed. She'd heard of the GRIMM Reaper somewhere, but couldn't remember. Neither had most of the others, given the expressions on their face, though Weiss seemed to know, and Pyrrha certainly did.

Weiss struggled back to her feet and grabbed her crutches. "Well, I'm staying here to get my physical therapy started. Why don't the rest of you go on to Kamakura, like you'd planned?"

"I'll stay," Ruby told her. Weiss opened her mouth to protest, then shrugged and smiled.

"I'll go back to my hotel." Maria waved off Pyrrha's attempts to help her. "My dear, Rissa might have been right about my eyesight, but I've been dealing with it for going on forty years now." She picked up her cane. "I tell you what. I'll meet you at the Officers' Club at Atsugi, and we'll get to know each other. First round is on me." She winked with her good eye. "And I'll tell you why I'm called the GRIMM Reaper."

* * *

_Mount Yamantau_

_Ural Mountains, Russia Dead Zone_

_29 June 2001_

"Home sweet home," Mercury Black sighed as they got out of the ancient 2 ½-ton truck. It had been a long journey back here: he'd been the only one to bring back an intact aircraft, which was still sitting in Vladivostok. Once they'd landed there and been patched up by Lil' Miss Malachite, they'd boarded a train to Ulan Ude, the last remaining stop on the Trans-Siberian Railroad. From there, it had been a very uncomfortable drive on trucks to Mount Yamantau, with several changes and stops. Only a select few knew Yamantau's importance, which meant no one but those few knew the entire route. The truck drivers from Krasnoyarsk to New Omsk only knew that route. Occasionally, Mercury knew, those that drove trucks from Yamantau to the ruins of Sverdlovsk were killed and replaced, in case anyone was tempted to give away the secret.

He wondered if _he_ was about to be killed.

As they climbed out, filthy and travel-sore, Tyrian Callows was waiting for them. The scorpion Faunus' tail lashed back and forth, and much to Mercury's discomfort, he was wearing his typically insane grin. "Welcome back, welcome back!" he said with an ironic bow. "I _do_ hope you missed us as much as we missed you."

Hazel Rainart cut off Mercury's retort. "Ignore him. Let's go."

They brushed past the Faunus, who seemed a little disappointed no one rose to his bait. He made a show of sniffing around them. "Where's Cinder? Did the clock strike midnight and she turned back into a nobody?"

Emerald Sustrai stopped, her fists balling up. Cinder was her best friend—even if it was rarely reciprocated. "Emerald, come on. Don't listen to that asshole."

Tyrian knew his last taunt had hit home. "Don't tell me…something _happened_ to dear, sweet Cinder?"

Emerald's hand flashed to the Beretta in her shoulder holster, and it was out and pointed at Tyrian's head. "I will fucking blow your head off, _tarado._ "

Tyrian walked towards her and bent over until his forehead was touching the pistol's barrel. "Careful, little girl. Cinder's not here to protect you anymore." He then rubbed his face across the barrel, and even licked it. Emerald looked nauseous, and Mercury could see her finger beginning to tighten on the trigger. He stepped forward and shoved the Faunus back. "Step off, asshole."

Tyrian suddenly put on an utterly false expression of sadness. "Oh, I'm sorry. Don't misunderstand; I'm in mourning just as much as you."

"You don't even like Cinder," Emerald said, her finger coming off the trigger, though the gun was still pointed at him.

"Not mourning for her. For _you._ Because you've failed our Queen, and that…that is a tragedy." He nodded, grinned again, and began laughing. His laughter followed them up the stairs into the mountain.

* * *

They made their way to the briefing room, overlooking the GRIMM assembly floor. Arthur Watts was there, and Mercury noticed that, for once, the scientist looked nervous. Tyrian came out of the opposite door and squatted on his chair. Salem sat in hers, dressed in her usual cloak, her hair done up in the severe halo-like braids. Mercury forced himself to look at her: with her red eyes and pearl white skin, she didn't look human. Sometimes, he wondered if she even was.

Her voice, however, was even. "I would like you to explain to me how it is you managed to fail so spectacularly." Salem said without preamble.

No one said anything at first, and then Hazel stepped forward. "Our forces failed to coordinate. The GRIMM attack on Hokkaido did draw most of the JASDF north as planned, but the White Fang did nothing. And our force was split over the Sea of Japan by the arrival of this Reaper Flight—"

"Stop." Salem raised a hand. She then slid her chair back and began walking around the table towards them, hands behind her back. Mercury and Emerald stepped back despite themselves, but Hazel stood his ground. "Let me rephrase the question," she said. "Who is responsible for your defeat?"

There was another stretch of silence. Hazel looked down at Salem. "I take full responsibility as the senior surviving—"

Salem suddenly punched Hazel in the groin. The big man doubled over, only to be hit hard across the face. Each blow was timed and aimed for maximum pain, and they heard the sound of bone breaking as Hazel dropped to the floor, wheezing for air. "But that wouldn't be fair now, would it? _Would it?"_ Salem was shouting, almost screaming. It was all the more terrifying because none of them had seen her lose her temper before.

"I don't—" Hazel tried to say through clenched teeth, as blood ran down over his lips.

"Emerald, your sidearm." Salem held her hand out, and Emerald handed over the Beretta, too afraid to do otherwise. She had grown up on the hard streets of Madrid, seen the worst depravities of mankind, but there was something about the cold anger of this woman that utterly petrified her. Salem flicked the safety off and put the gun to Hazel's head. "Emerald, I want you to tell me whose fault this was." Suddenly the pistol came up and Emerald found herself staring down the barrel. "Now."

"I…I…" Emerald licked suddenly dry lips. "It was Cinder. We failed because of Cinder." It wasn't entirely true, and she suspected Salem knew it. Cinder's objective had been JINN, however, and she had most definitely failed in that.

"Very good." The pistol remained trained on her, then Salem flipped it around and presented it to Emerald grip first. "I want you to understand that failure…all of you. I want you to understand why Cinder must be left to sit in isolation, alone, without allies, until if and when she redeems herself."

Mercury's eyes widened in surprise, and he wasn't alone. "You mean she's _alive?_ "

"Malachite's bunch said that she got shot down over Tsushima!" Emerald exclaimed. "No beeper or parachute!"

"Malachite _assumed_ there was no beeper or parachute," Salem corrected. "But Cinder is alive."

"You're joking," Watts scoffed. "How could you possibly know that?"

Tyrian was across the table in a flash, his scorpion tail raising to strike. "How _dare_ you question our queen, heretic!"

Watts leaned back, going pale, then looked at Salem, who only stared at him. "I…ah…of course not," he finished. "Forgive me."

"Tyrian, enough." Salem sent him skittering back to his chair. "I know because Malachite contacted me yesterday. Cinder somehow managed to bail out of her prototype, stole transportation to Korea, then was flown by Malachite's men back to Vladivostok. She paid her way. What happens to her next I have no idea, but I assume—for her sake—that she does not regard her mission as complete." She returned to her chair, though she did not sit. "I am going to say something, and I expect I will not need to repeat it.

"It is important to not lose sight of what our mission is about. I understand what drives you—love, justice, reverence, even revenge. But the _moment_ you put your desires before my own…you will die. Slowly. Horribly. This is not a threat; only the simple truth." Her voice was even again, which made the words more chilling. She was not threatening; Salem was making a promise. "The path to your desires is through me. I suggest you remember that." She walked over to the picture window as Hazel slowly got back to his feet and Watts nervously adjusted his tie. "Well, that's enough of that. I think I've made my point. Now then, let's press on." She turned back to them. "I suspected we would not gain control of the Spring Maiden, and I have a contingency plan. Israel still retains its nuclear weapons, and securing a few of those would—"

"Excuse me, ma'am," Hazel rumbled, though Mercury noticed his voice was about half an octave higher than usual. He wiped his face of the blood. "There is more to report."

"Very well." Salem leaned against her chair.

"This Reaper Flight…my conclusion is they will take JINN to Europe, to give to General Ironwood. It is logical that he would need it more than anyone else, given our eventual plans."

"I had deduced the same thing," Salem said impatiently. "I've already taken steps to stop them."

"And there's one more item. Something Emerald needed to say to you." He looked at her.

Emerald suddenly felt the need to go to the bathroom as those hellish eyes turned on her. "Yes?" Salem asked.

"I…well…" There was nothing for it. She took a breath and continued. "I saved Weiss Schnee's life. She was drowning and I kept her head out of the water."

Salem sighed. "That was a mistake, Emerald; you should have let the Schnee girl drown. However, I understand something of this so-called fighter pilot code, so you are forgiven for your lapse of judgement."

"It's not that, ma'am. We were in the water for almost an hour, and I think she had a concussion or something. She was delirious through some of it. She was babbling about names—like someone named Rissa Arando or something—"

"Rissa Arashikaze, the DDI of the CIA." Salem sounded bored.

"Well, there was someone else. A new pilot she mentioned, named Oscar Pine."

"So?"

"Well…granted, Weiss was just sort of talking nonsense, but…" Salem folded her arms across her breasts and began to tap her foot. "She said Oscar Pine was Captain Ozpin's son." Emerald shrugged. "I thought maybe…well, Hazel thought it, but so did I…that that information would be, you know, useful."

Salem closed her eyes. Her arms dropped to her sides, and her foot tapping stopped. "Leave," she ordered.

"Your Grace," Tyrian began, "I can—"

"I said _leave._ " The Faunus opened his mouth, and Salem's lips peeled back from her teeth. "The next words that leave your mouth will be your last, Tyrian." He was instantly off his chair and retreating back through the doors. The others soon followed, Emerald last, watching Salem in fear until the door closed behind her.

Salem took several deep breaths. "Ozpin…had a son," she said aloud. "Ozpin had a son. A child." She crossed to Tyrian's chair. "A _child._ " Then slowly, methodically, and in completely silent rage, Salem began to smash every piece of furniture in the room.


	6. Don't Fear the Reaper

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone gets together to congratulate Oscar on becoming an ace. But Maria Calavera is there too, and she has a story to tell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This should be the last of the "filler" chapters; I intend to fast forward to the "Argus Limited" chapter next time around-so yay, more air combat! I never intended to spin out Weiss' rehab for long; we can just skip ahead.
> 
> I did want to at least do a little bit with Oscar's "ace-in-a-day" status, and combine that with Maria Calavera's story, which comes much earlier than it did in canon RWBY. Since she's joining the team earlier, Qrow would've recognized her earlier, so that happens here. Naturally, Maria couldn't be blinded by Tock's sword, so I had to change it around some. Incidentally, part of Maria's story is based on a real occurrence: Saburo Sakai's epic eight-hour flight from Guadalcanal to Rabaul after being badly wounded in a dogfight. What Maria does is pretty much what Saburo did. Another part of Maria's post-injury life was based on Greg "Pappy" Boyington, who struggled with alcoholism heavily after the war.
> 
> And yes, there's a little bit of Rosegarden and a little bit of Bumblebee in here. Hopefully not too much; I'm trying not to force either relationship, but writing them out to see what happens. Blake and Yang may or may not end up in a relationship in this story; at the moment, she's closer to Sun.
> 
> Anyhow, on with the story. Please leave a review if you like; I enjoy hearing from my readers.

_Naval Air Station Atsugi_

_Atsugi, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan_

_29 June 2001_

Oscar Pine heard hammering on his door; because Nora had insisted on rooming with Ren, he had a room to himself. He reached out of the shower and wiped his face with a towel. "Who is it?" he yelled. He shut off the water to hear better.

"It's Ruby! Can I come in?"

"I'm in the shower, but sure!"

"I'd better not!" Ruby yelled back. Oscar remembered the time she had accidentally walked in on him in the base showers. It was a little mortifying to know that Ruby knew what he looked like naked. _I wish I knew what she looked like na—stop that,_ he told himself.

"Gimme a minute!" He got out of the shower, briskly toweled himself off, ran into the room itself, and threw on underwear and his workout clothes. He then opened the door. "Sorry about that."

"No problem!" Ruby grinned sweetly up at him, and Oscar's heart missed a beat. Ruby Rose was remarkably cute, even more so because she didn't seem to be aware of the fact. Then she cleared her throat and came to attention. "Ensign Pine," she addressed him with weighty importance, "you are ordered to the Officers Club at 1800 hours, where you will formally celebrate becoming an aerial ace."

"Ordered?"

"Ordered!" Ruby pointed to the captain's bars on her uniform. "I am a captain and you are an ensign and you will obey, mister!" The effect was ruined somewhat by an outbreak of giggles.

Oscar came to attention and saluted like a cadet; regulations stated that salutes were not to be given inside, but obviously this was not an _actual_ order. "Yes, ma'am! Anything you ask, ma'am! Permission not to get drunk, ma'am!" He'd gotten a little tipsy the night they had burned the piano—not drunk, but not feeling a great deal of pain, either. That, and a few experiences in Pensacola bars, convinced Oscar that heavy drinking was not for him.

"Hmm…" Ruby mused, looking him up and down. "We'll see, Ensign. _We'll see_." She pitched her voice down dramatically. "Anyways, 1600. Be there or I send Yang."

"Oh dear…bad news."

* * *

1600 rolled around soon enough, and Oscar arrived in freshly pressed khakis, with his golden wings and two ribbons set neatly above his right pocket. To his surprise, few in the club were wearing uniforms. Most were either in casual clothes or in flight suits. It was far more crowded than it had been when they'd burned the piano; the USS _George Washington_ was in port in Yokosuka, so its air wing was temporarily parked at Atsugi. He saw Yang waving for his attention, so he crossed the club—being very careful that his hat was off, unless he wanted to buy a round for everyone there—and went over to their table. Ruby and Norn Flights had been able to secure a fairly secluded corner of the bar. "There's the man!" Nora yelled, jumped up, and gave him a bone-crushing hug. Oscar tried to suppress a groan of pain without much success. As he nodded at the nine people clustered around the table, he noticed Maria Calavera there as well. He went to sit down, but Pyrrha Nikos stood up. "Ensign Pine, please remain standing. In fact, you should probably come to attention."

"Atten- _shun!"_ Yang shouted. Her voice carried further than she meant it to, and several other pilots braced instinctively. Inspired, Yang jumped up on top of the table, almost putting a boot into the pizzas they'd ordered. "Attention in the bar!" she yelled. Conversation ceased, and all eyes went to the table. Yang jumped down. "Proceed, Major Nikos."

"Thank you, Captain Long." Pyrrha held out a hand, and Ren placed a paper folder into it. She opened the folder and cleared her throat, reading from a piece of parchment inside. "Ensign Oscar Pine distinguished himself by meritorious achievement while participating in an aerial battle near Nishinoshima, Japan on 21 June 2001. On that date, Ensign Pine, while flying a F-18C Hornet on detached duty with Huntsman Flight Norn, engaged on two occasions flights of GRIMM autonomous drones that outnumbered him. During these engagements, he successfully destroyed five confirmed drones, despite this being his first combat mission. Ensign Pine materially assisted in the victory at Nishinoshima, preventing a band of air pirates from achieving their objective, and demonstrated his outstanding proficiency and steadfast devotion to duty. The professional skill and airmanship displayed by Ensign Pine reflect great credit upon himself and the United States Navy." She closed the folder, set it aside, and held out her hand again. This time, it was Ruby who dropped a small blue box into it. Pyrrha came to attention and held out the box like a liege lord presenting a samurai with a sword, then opened it. "Ensign Oscar Pine, on behalf of the President and people of the United States of Canada, you are hereby awarded the Air Medal."

Oscar stared down at the medal, gold with an eagle surmounted on a sixteen-point star, at the end of a blue and yellow ribbon. "You're kidding," he blurted.

"No kidding," Pyrrha replied. "Captain Belladonna, would you do the honors?"

"I would. Hauptmann Schnee, the drink, please." Weiss nodded and grabbed the bottle of whiskey on the table. She poured a glass full of the amber liquid as if she was pouring for the President, then solemnly handed the glass to Blake. Blake stood, walked two paces to Oscar, took the Air Medal from its case, and dropped the medal into the whiskey glass. She then held it out to Oscar. "Drink it."

"Uh…" Oscar began.

"You have to drink your medal," Blake smiled. "All at once. Otherwise, I get every Marine in this bar to toss you out on your ass." There was a satisfied growl through the bar; Oscar noted with alarm that there was at least a full squadron of Marines there.

He took the glass and raised it to the bar. Then, with a nervous gulp, Oscar turned the drink up and drank down the liquor, careful not to swallow the medal on top of it. The entire club chanted _"Chug! Chug! Chug!"_ The whiskey felt like someone had napalmed his throat and stomach, but he kept it down. He raised the empty glass, the ribbon of the Air Medal held in his teeth. "What do we say to the Ensign?" Yang shouted.

" _Him! Him! Fuck him!"_ the bar answered, then erupted in clapping and cheers. A few of the pilots came over to slap Oscar's back or shake hands, and finally he was allowed to sit. Ruby reached over and pinned the Air Medal to his uniform. "Good job," she told him.

"Well, I wouldn't want to disappoint the honor of Norn Flight." He thanked Pyrrha as she handed the folder to him, opened it, and ran his fingers over the embossed lettering. He felt part of the club now.

Yang opened the pizza box and distributed slices, and soon everyone was opening beers and telling stories. They were just the good stories, Oscar noticed, similar to the ones told at the last time they'd all been at the bar, though this time Blake was present. Yang forced her to talk about how she and Sun had helped destroy the Feilong; Blake retaliated by making Yang talk about how she got the nickname of "Suds." Yang embellished the story, making it sound like she'd run to the flightline topless, trying to zip up her flight suit over her considerable bosom. Oscar was sure that the next time Yang told the story, she'd be climbing into her F-15 completely naked. Nora coaxed Ren into telling them the story of how he and Nora had gotten into a bar fight in Valdosta, Georgia when he'd first visited her after flight training. About halfway through Ren's story, which kept being interrupted by Nora, Qrow Branwen arrived. He brought over a bottle of whiskey and a glass, pulled up a chair, and waved his hand in greeting. "Don't let me interrupt the revival," he said, then noticed Maria. While Ren concluded his story, he kept staring at her, clearly trying to place the old woman.

"Okay, Weiss," Ruby said, halfway through a slice of pepperoni and pineapple pizza, "your turn. You've got to tell the story about your scar."

"And how you slipped and busted your ass," Yang chortled.

Weiss smiled. "As it happens, Yang Xiao Long, I lied about that."

Yang turned to her, eyes wide. "Youf lmpfd?" Her mouth was full of pizza.

"Yes," Weiss said, translating. "I didn't want to admit the…actual reason I have this scar." She pointed to her left eye, where the narrow but visible scar bisected it; the eye itself was fine, but the eyelid was scarred as well. "I didn't slip and fall in the cockpit of my Typhoon."

"What happened?" Blake asked.

"Fencing practice. I was fencing with our family's master of the sword, and I lost my temper. I took off my helmet and charged the poor man. He knocked my sword away, but I was trying to tackle him at the time, and the sword caught me here down to here." She traced the scar with her finger. "It bled horribly, as facial wounds always do. I was lucky not to lose the eye—somehow, the rapier's point missed it." She took a drink. "It was my fault, but my father fired the master anyway. This was only a few months before I got orders to Vytal Flag."

"Geez, Weiss," Ruby said, "why didn't you just tell us that? That's way better than slipping."

Weiss shrugged. "I already had a reputation as Little Miss Rich Bitch. I didn't want to make it worse."

"Still an awesome story!" Ruby gushed. "Well, except the part about the guy getting fired, and you almost losing your eye—" Involuntarily, she looked at Maria. "Oh. Oh geez, I'm sorry, Colonel Calavera. I wasn't thinking."

Maria held up a hand. "That's all right, Captain. No harm done."

Qrow snapped his fingers. "Colonel _Maria_ Calavera?" he asked. She gave him a nod. "Holy shit. You're the GRIMM Reaper." To the surprise of the younger pilots, Qrow sounded like he was in awe.

"That's me," Maria confirmed.

"Okay," Nora said, putting up a hand. "I hate to sound dumb, but… _who_ are you?"

Before Maria could answer, Qrow spoke. "You've never _heard_ of the GRIMM Reaper?"

"Was I supposed to?"

"Hell yes," Qrow shot back, "she's only the most successful fighter pilot in the history of being a fighter pilot!"

Maria put up her hands. "Now, let's not go insane here, Major. I'm not the most successful."

"Yeah? How many kills? _Confirmed_ kills?"

The old woman shrugged. "I think around 300 or so. I honestly lost count."

"Three _hundred?"_ Oscar exclaimed.

"Probably more," Qrow told him. "She's probably got more than Hartmann and Barkhorn, and those two Krauts had 352 and 301." Weiss decided not to be offended at the word kraut. "Hell, nobody comes close except a couple more Germans."

Maria smiled and looked at Ruby and Yang. "Oh, I don't know. Summer Rose was closing in. I think she had 250 before she…well, disappeared." The last was said somewhat self-consciously.

Yang shook her head. "No way. Mom had over a hundred, but nowhere near 250."

"Yang!" Ruby protested, and elbowed her sister.

Maria took a drink of beer. "Not true. My understanding was that Major Rose doctored her flight logs. She was afraid someone would pull her off operations if they knew just how many kills she was accumulating." She nodded at the two women. "If there was anyone I wouldn't have minded breaking my record, it was Summer."

"Damn," Blake breathed. "No _wonder_ they called you the GRIMM Reaper."

"Like I said, that's me." She raised her beer and took another drink.

"Where are you from originally?" Ren asked.

"I was born in Ciudad Juarez on December 7, 1941," Maria told them. "Yes, Pearl Harbor Day. My father emigrated to the United States a few months later to build ships for the Navy. He did so well that he eventually was able to open his own company by the late 1950s—a small but rather successful one in Alameda. He really didn't like California, however, so in 1962, he relocated to Texas. A good thing, too—otherwise we would've been killed in the nuclear war. I was in flight school by that time—when I wasn't going to Texas A&M to learn how to be a schoolteacher." Maria smiled. "Back then, women weren't allowed to be jet pilots at all, unless your name was Jacqueline Cochran.

"Things were pretty hard after the war, but we managed—Papa's shipyard was one of the few that had survived the war. Then the GRIMM appeared, and the US armed forces was so short of pilots that they started accepting female pilots—at first just as transport and patrol pilots, then as fighter pilots. I was in the first class of female fighter pilots. I may be the only one left of that group."

"I remember," Qrow put in. "They made a pretty big to-do about you ladies. You were a big inspiration."

Maria laughed. "Oh yes. We were wined and dined and shined. Then we were thrown into the shit over Utah, when the GRIMM made a big push for Salt Lake City in 1970." She grinned at Oscar. "Ace in day? Not me. I didn't get squat on my first mission. All I did was piss myself, then forget to put my gear down and wrecked my plane. Ah well—it was an old F-100 anyway."

"An F-100?" Ruby exclaimed. "They were sending you up in a Hun?" She used the nickname for the Super Sabre.

Maria nodded. "Kiddo, they were sending us up in anything that had wings and guns. Hell, Miia and Rachnee went up in F-84s." She looked at her beer for a moment. "We lost a lot of people back then. We stopped them, though." She took a drink and shook off the memories—some of them. "Anyway, on my tenth mission, I got a piece of a Beowulf. Not a kill, just a damaged. Then on my fifteenth mission, I got a confirmed kill. Then on my twentieth, I got two." She drank the last of her beer. "By mission number thirty, I had twenty kills. And I just kept going. All over the world."

"You were a damn legend," Qrow said. "And then you disappeared in 1985."

"Can I get another beer? On second thought, the hell with it." She reached over and grabbed Qrow's bottle of whiskey, found a glass, and poured it full. Her hands were shaking a little.

"You don't have to tell us the story," Pyrrha said, putting a hand on the old woman's shoulder.

"Why not? It's a good story." Maria drank some of the whiskey. "Yes, I disappeared. I didn't have much choice."

"Was it…Ozpin?" Oscar asked in a small voice.

"Nope. I never worked with him. Made it a point not to. It was a damn Faunus named Tock." Maria leaned back. "Tock was a mercenary. She'd hire out to anyone with the right amount of cash. Well, someone paid her a lot of money to kill me. Not sure why, but someone wanted me dead. Anyhow, she caught me over the North Atlantic with all my missiles gone but two Sidewinders; I was in a F-15 by that time. I'd just shot down a Nevermore—"

"By _yourself?"_ Ruby interrupted.

"Yep," Maria confirmed casually, as if shooting down Nevermores singlehandedly was a regular occurrence. "Anyway, Tock and her bunch jumped me. I got three of them." If there was any doubt Maria was a fighter pilot, she dispelled it by using her hands. "Tock was the last one left; she was in a Jaguar, of all things. I should've been able to take her easy, but she was good." She pointed her hands at each other. "We went head to head. Guns pass…and got each other." Her hands went past each other. "At least that's what I was told later. I guess they recovered Tock's body from the ocean…missing her head."

"Shit hot," Yang said, the traditional fighter pilot compliment.

"Not really." Maria took a big drink of whiskey this time. "I had a thirty millimeter slug go off against my windscreen. Blew plexiglass right back into my face—and guess who was stupid enough to have her visor up?" Maria pointed at her right shoulder. "Caught shrapnel in this shoulder. Luckily superficial, but it hurt like hell. The glass went back into my eyes. This one—" she pointed at the eyepatch "—was just gone. The other one just had fragments, and it ripped off half the eyelid. Couple more frags went into my forehead—and just like you said, Hauptmann Schnee, it bled like a son of a bitch."

"God Almighty," Blake said in shock. "Did you punch out?"

"Tried. Found out later that the seat had gotten hit too, somehow; anyway, I couldn't get out. So I decided to try and get back to Langley." She swirled the whiskey around. "Took me three hours, because I had to fly slow. Radio was gone too. Half my instruments didn't work, and the radar was dead. I had to fly by dead reckoning—just stick the sun in front of me and fly that way. Wasn't easy, because I couldn't see. I had a water bottle and washed out some of my right eye, so I could see a little." She drank again. "I kept passing out. When I felt like I was going to, I punched myself in the shoulder. The pain kept me awake." Another drink, and Maria poured more whiskey. "Finally the CAP saw me and escorted me in. I don't know how I landed that F-15. Nobody knows—except that Guy up there." She pointed at the ceiling. "I passed out right after I shut down the engines in the overrun. I woke up three days later. I couldn't see at all. Turns out the right eye cornea was scratched up too bad to salvage. Luckily, I was able to get a cornea transplant a few years later." Maria smiled. "That little shit Arashikaze wasn't kidding when she said I'm blind in one eye and can't see out of the other. I can see all of you just fine, but the bar's just a haze."

"Don't you have glasses?" Nora asked.

"Somewhere. I get along okay." She held up her cane. "My flying career was over, though. Now that I had aerial assassins trying to kill me, the Air Force pensioned me off and just said I was gone. Like you said, Major—I disappeared."

"How does a legend just disappear?" Oscar wanted to know.

"You never used your name, you never showed your face," Qrow answered. "Lots of us just thought you were laying low. Eventually, we figured you'd gotten killed. But those stories about you…"

"Arashikaze said you stole the YF-16 prototype?" Ruby said.

Maria grinned. "Sure as hell did. And I put that fucker through its paces. General Dynamics wasn't sure if they wanted to kill me or kiss me." The table laughed at that, breaking the tension. "And the part about stealing the Mirage 2000 prototype too? That's true. Same with the pistachio smuggling ring. That was just for fun." She shrugged. "What can I say? I love pistachios." She raised her whiskey glass. "I got some other stories, but those might be a little too much for tender ears." She motioned at Oscar. "We'll put it this way. I've drunk more beer and pissed more blood and rode more dick than all of you ladies put together." Everyone laughed again, a shade more nervously; Pyrrha, Oscar and Ruby were red with embarrassment.

Qrow still continued to stare at her. "You were one of my inspirations. Hell, I based my flying style off of yours, best I could. I wanted to be the next GRIMM Reaper."

"Well, I'm nothing but a disappointment," Maria replied, "so you're well on your way." All of them winced at the insult.

"How can you say that?" Blake said. "You're a heroine!"

"Show me a heroine and I'll show you a bum. Kiddo, a Huntress is supposed to go out and protect others. Naturally, after I lost my sight, I was grounded. But I could've become a teacher somewhere—that's what my degree is in, actually—or even hit the lecture circuit. Passed on what I knew. But I was scared. I figured there were more Tocks out there, waiting to finish me off. So I sat around my son's house, feeling sorry for myself and spending the day drunk or high on pain pills. I woke up on a slab in a morgue one day in 1989; the emergency room doctors had declared me dead. That was when I finally started to pull out of it. I got the surgery, got myself clean, and decided to tour the world…do something with what remains of my life. My son died in a GRIMM attack six years ago, but my grandson's an Army general; he was at Beacon, more or less. So don't aspire to be like me, especially when some of you are stronger already." She looked pointedly at Yang, then at Weiss.

"So why do you want to get into Europe so badly?" Blake asked.

Maria shrugged. "Haven't been there in awhile. No other reason." She smiled. "You folks don't worry about me. I can take care of myself. Get me to Turkey and I'll get the rest of the way."

"What about that French general?" Ren said.

"Caroline Cordovin?" Maria waved it off. "Arashikaze was exaggerating. Cordovin and me go way back. Not a problem." She poured herself a little more whiskey. "Well, enough depressing shit. This is a party; let's act like it."

* * *

Later— _much_ later—Ruby and Oscar walked back to the VOQ. Oscar had taken onboard a bit more liquor than he'd intended: he wasn't drunk, but he was feeling pretty good, enough that Ruby wanted to make sure he got back all right. The others had gotten pretty merry as well, though Pyrrha and Ren had stayed sober, and Ruby noticed Maria had stopped drinking after that second glass of whiskey. Unfortunately, Qrow was probably passed out by now, and the other girls not long behind him. Ruby resolved to make sure the rest of her flight got home all right once she was done with Oscar; a drunken Weiss on crutches would be fun to watch, but she didn't need to break her leg again.

"You didn't have to do this," Oscar told her. "Really, I'm okay." They stopped at the front of the VOQ. "Go on back to the club and make sure your flight's okay."

"Yeah, well…I guess so." She smiled at him. "I had fun tonight. I guess now you don't need to feel left out. You're, well, part of the team!" Ruby laughed self-consciously.

Oscar summoned up his courage. "Well…if you want…after you put your flight to bed…you could come up to my place. Have a nightcap." He wasn't really sure what a nightcap was, but it was the line handsome spies always used on the beautiful girls in the movies.

Ruby hesitated, then slowly shook her head. "Thanks, Oscar, but…I don't think I'd better. I like you, but not…not like that."

"Oh." Oscar knew disappointment was all over his face. She just saw him as a friend, nothing more. He sighed. _What did you expect?_ he thought to himself. _That she'd just hop in your bed? She's not interested in you, dipshit. You're in the friend zone now._

Ruby couldn't stand Oscar looking like that; she felt like she'd just kicked a puppy. The fact was, Oscar was attractive—damn attractive, she thought. She remembered what she saw when she'd caught him naked. There weren't a lot of fat fighter pilots: the constant G-forces and sweating during dogfights tended to keep the weight off and keep the body toned, and like most fighter pilots, Oscar obviously did some working out. Ruby was still a virgin, and while she wouldn't be human if she didn't at least _think_ about sex on occasion, she'd never really met anyone that appealed to her. Yet Oscar sort of did. She could see herself accepting his offer, then getting naked with him, climbing into bed, having him gently take her virginity with rose petals and soft music…

She sighed too. Real life wasn't like that. It would probably hurt like hell, and some dimly remembered religious upbringing told her she shouldn't just leap into bed with someone. Still, she didn't want to just leave him like this, and Ruby admitted to herself that she should keep her options open. There might just be some night when she would _need_ to accept Oscar's offer…but it wasn't tonight.

Ruby stepped forward, stood on tiptoe, and kissed his freckled cheek. "Don't think there's never a chance," she whispered. "I'm not leading you on, Oscar. I just…don't know, okay? I don't think I'm ready."

He nodded. "I understand," he said, truthfully, because he did.

Ruby gave him a heartbreaking smile and walked away. Oscar turned and went into the VOQ, promising himself a cold shower.

* * *

_Naval Air Station Atsugi_

_Atsugi, Kanagawa Prefrecture, Japan_

_4 July 2001_

Blake sat down on the sidewalk and stretched, leaning over, extending her arms to touch the tips of her running shoes. Yang stared at her. "Holy shit, girl. If I stretched like that, I'd pop a vertebra." She bent over to try and touch her toes; her fingers managed to reach her ankles, barely. "See?" She straightened up. "I think my boobs are too big."

Blake turned and touched the toes of the other foot. "You should try yoga. It works for me."

"Since when?"

"Since always. I used to use the gym at Beacon."

"Huh. I don't know about that. I kinda enjoy beating the hell out of bags with Pyrrha." Yang jogged in place for a moment, trying to limber up a bit. "She's really getting into some MMA shit. God help Cinder Fall if Pyrrha ever catches her outside her plane."

Blake got to her feet. "I thought Cinder was dead."

"They recovered the plane the other day. No body. I've read enough of Ruby's comic books to know that, if there's no body, the bad guy ain't dead." Yang cracked her knuckles. "Oh well. Then again, maybe the bitch drowned and the crabs ate her. Let's go."

The two women began jogging as the sun came up. It was still cool at this time of morning; the humidity and mugginess would set in later. July was proving to be a hot month in Japan: when it wasn't steaming hot, it was raining. This morning it was bright and clear; Mount Fuji was out, towering over the horizon, bathed in the soft pink of the morning sun. "Good day for flying," Yang puffed.

"Too bad we're not," Blake replied. "Big barbecue later. Fourth of July and all that."

"Yeah, happy Fourth," Yang told her, then grinned. "Oh wait, I forgot. You were born in England." She put out a hand. "No taxation without representation, you Limey!"

Blake laughed. "Oh, shut up. I was born in Menagerie. If anything, I'm Scottish. I'm on your side." She raised her voice. "Down with the king! Glory to the Jacobites!" They were jogging along the perimeter fence, and a few Japanese passerby were startled at the sudden yell. Blake looked away, feeling dumb.

Yang snickered, though she wasn't sure who the Jacobites were. She enjoyed these morning jogs with Blake; they'd started it the morning after Oscar's party, in a vain effort to deal with raging hangovers. The two of them were starting to reconnect, starting to be friends again. Yang noticed that the nightmares had stopped after the Battle of Nishinoshima, and her confrontation with Raven. She had her confidence back. It felt good, and it felt good to _feel_ good. Blake was smiling again too; Yang wondered if her demons were finally gone too.

_No,_ Yang thought, _not yet. That fucker Adam is still out there._

"You got quiet all of a sudden," Blake observed.

"Water break." They stopped jogging, pulling out their water bottles. "Blake, I'm going to say something, and I'm kinda worried how you're going to take it."

"Uh oh." Blake put her water bottle back on her belt.

"Yeah. It's about your ex."

Blake looked down. "Yeah. I guess we do need to talk about him at some point." She looked west, towards Fuji. "He's still out there," she said, echoing Yang's thoughts. "He'll find some bolthole. There's still a lot of White Fang cells out there. Some might join Mom and Dad, but some won't."

Yang sprayed some water into her mouth, swished it around, and spit it out. "I don't want to talk about him specifically. I want to talk about that damn Moonslice of his. He made us look silly at Beacon."

"He's good, Yang." Blake continued to stare into the horizon. "He's very good…as we both know. And we didn't help matters." She rubbed her eyes. " _I_ didn't help matters."

"I fucked up worse than you did." Yang wiggled her metal fingers. "So let's talk about that. About that fight over Beacon. Break it down. Figure out where we fucked up." Yang smiled lopsidedly. "Because the day's gonna come where we fight Adam again, and I'm not losing another piece of me." She pushed up her chest. "I mean, next time he might get one of the girls, and that really _would_ be devastating to the world."

Blake laughed, which was Yang's intention. She started jogging again, and Yang caught up. "Well, we wouldn't want to deprive the male world of those magnificent mammaries."

"Or girls. I'm not that picky." She wiggled her tongue at Blake.

"Don't ask, don't tell, Yang." Blake turned serious. "But that's a good idea. Let's go over it. Where _did_ we go wrong?"

"We took off," Yang joked.

"Seriously. That's a good place to start." Blake began demonstrating with her hands as they continued their jog, and Yang listened.

* * *

"And…done. 30 reps." Ruby hit the stopwatch on her phone. "Take five, Weiss. Then another 30."

Weiss leaned back against the mat. The cast was off now, replaced by a light cast, one that was more flexible. Her legs felt like they were on fire. She was drenched in sweat. The hospital rehab facility at Yokosuka was closed for the holiday, but Weiss was keeping to her schedule, which consisted of leg exercises done on an exercise mat. She'd accepted Ruby's offer of help, but what she didn't know was that Ruby would work her like a drill sergeant. _"Gott im Himmel,"_ she groaned.

"You agreed to three weeks," Ruby reminded her.

"Because I didn't want to be left behind," Weiss replied. She pulled sweat-plastered white hair out of her eyes. "I have an idea. Let's toss Maria out and I'll ride backseat in your F-16."

"Like hell. Maria's going to be bad enough of a backseat driver." Ruby reset the stopwatch. "She wants to fly a little when we go over to China. She's basically blind, and she wants to fly."

"And because you have a soft spot for old folks and puppies, you'll let her do it." Weiss smiled up at her.

"Huh. Well, just for that, you can do 50 reps."

Weiss' retort was cut off by the door to the base gym opening up. Both women looked in that direction and their eyes widened. "It can't be," Weiss whispered. "Not here."

"Holy shit," Ruby breathed. "It _is_ him."

He was wearing a flight suit that strained against his six foot four, 200-pound physique. He spotted the two women, flashed a grin, and walked over. "Well, hello there, Ruby and Weiss," said Cardin Winchester.


	7. Fly Like an Eagle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Silk Road escort seems pretty easy for Ruby, Norn and Cardinal Flights...but someone forgot to tell the GRIMM. 
> 
> Get ready for a big air battle!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew! This one's a long chapter, but we've got one hell of a dogfight to do! I'm proud of this chapter in particular; I think it's one of the best I've ever written. More notes to follow at the end...I don't want to give anything away.

_Lintong Airbase_

_Xi'an, Shaanxi Province, Unified Republic of China_

_25 July 2001_

"Settle down," Qrow Branwen said over the din of twelve fighter pilots talking over each other. "Hey, let's settle it down." With no one paying attention to him, Qrow took a drink from his flask, pulled out his pistol, and fired it into the air. It would've been loud anywhere, but the report inside the hangar sounded like a howitzer going off. Conversation ceased as Ruby, Norn, and Cardinal Flights ducked or even hit the floor. "I said, _shut the hell up!"_ Qrow shouted. In the silence, there was a clatter some distance behind Qrow where the bullet finally landed. Luckily, the hangar was deserted except for them.

"Sorry," Pyrrha apologized for all of them.

"Great. Sit down." The pilots quickly took the metal chairs set out for them. Qrow holstered the pistol. "We got a lot to cover and not a lot of time to cover it, so me talk, you listen. I've been put in charge of this overcomplicated clusterfuck, so let's go over the plan."

Qrow took another shot from his flask, stuck it into a pocket on his flight suit, ignored the looks of concern on at least half the dozen pilots, and pointed to the map of China tacked onto an easel. A thick red line ran from Xi'an to Almaty in Kazakhstan. "It's about 2800 miles from Xi'an to Almaty, and the Silk Road train averages 200 miles an hour—so it's going to take them fourteen hours to make the trip. And we're going to be with the train the whole way."

Ren raised his hand. "Major, if they're only going 200 miles an hour, and we're pacing them…"

Qrow nodded. "Yeah, you guessed it. We're going to have to weave over the train the whole time. Just like the boys in P-51s and P-47s used to do it in Europe with the B-17s and B-24s. That means we're going to go slow…well, except for Nora there."

Nora threw her hands in the air. "Woo-hoo!" For once, the slow speed of her A-10 would not be a curse. Everyone else groaned. Keeping station would be a pain. They couldn't outdistance the train too much. It also meant using more gas.

"All right," Qrow continued, "there's five legs of the trip. First one's from Xi'an to Tongpuxiang." He managed not to stumble over the name. "Second from Tongpuxiang to Wangxiang. The train turns more north here to avoid the Gobi Desert. Then we go from Wangixang to Timenguan, then Timenguan to Sumbe, through the eighth wonder of the world—the Tian Shan Tunnel." Qrow traced the route under the Tian Shan Mountains that divided China from Kazakhstan. "That tunnel is 45 miles long, the longest in the world. Lucky for us, the train doesn't exactly have to worry about GRIMM while in the tunnel. The last leg is from Sumbe to Almaty. Once we get there, job's done."

"Where do you think we'll get hit?" Blake asked.

Qrow slapped the map at the mountains. "Here. It's the furthest point between air bases. That's where I'd hit." He shrugged. "Assuming we even get hit. The GRIMM have been active in the Mongolian Dead Zone, but the Chinese reported that the GRIMM have been pretty quiet since Nishinoshima, so maybe us and the Japanese put the hurt on 'em for awhile. So this may be a milk run."

"Suits me fine," Oscar smiled.

Ruby nudged him. "C'mon, Oscar! Don't you want to make ace-in-a-day again?"

"Some of us just want to make friggin' ace period," Cardin Winchester said.

"Some of us would like to get a friggin' _kill_ period!" Everyone laughed at the indignity in Sky Lark's voice.

Qrow flipped back the map to a blank piece of paper. He drew a crude picture of the bullet train from above. "Here's how we're going to do escort. Ruby Flight—" he nodded at Ruby, Weiss, Blake and Yang "—you'll be high and to the right to start off with, at about 20,000 feet and half a mile to the train. Norn Flight—" he looked at Pyrrha, Oscar, Ren, and Nora "—you'll be low and to the left, at about 10,000 feet and half a mile. We'll switch out every leg—Ruby will go low, Norn will go high. Now, Cardinal…" Qrow paused. "You guys _are_ Cardinal now, right?"

"Sure are, Major," Cardin replied. "Flipped a coin, and Cardinal won." He glanced back at Brawnz Ni and May Zedong, neither of which looked particularly happy. "Bronze would've been better," May commented.

"Whatevs. Cardinal, you're out front. Split your formation either side of the tracks, at about 15,000 feet. I stuck you guys out front because you poor bastards need more kills."

" _That_ I can get behind," May grinned.

"Now for the bad news," Qrow said. "We won't have tanker support. We'll land at Hami airbase during the third leg; the train will make a fueling stop there itself. That'll give you a chance to drain the lizard, or whatever you ladies call it, stretch your legs, and so on. We will have AWACS support, but the Chinese AWACS isn't quite as capable as ours. Still, we'll have raid warning. We'll also have plenty of SAR support as well. Expect a lot of folks waving at you from the ground; China's government has really been pushing this, so if you go down, smile, wave, and you'll probably get a good dinner out of the deal." He looked at his hand, where he'd jotted some notes. "Pyrrha will hand out cords and freqs for your kneepads." He referred to navigation coordinates and radio frequencies. "Tac callsigns the whole way. That reminds me—some of you guys have been getting sloppy up there. If you shoot something, I want to hear some Fox calls so no one gets assholed by a friendly missile. Same with splash calls. Don't turn into a Chatty Cathy, but you need to be better. That sounds weird from me, I know." One last look at his hand. "Almost forgot—weather. Good news there, too. Should be CAVU all the way to the mountains. We might get some light snow there, so if the ceiling goes to hell, make sure you watch out for the mountains. Let's not have to scrape someone off the side of one, okay?"

Qrow put his hands on his hips. "All right. Any questions?" The pilots looked at each other, but no one said anything until Cardin raised his hand. Qrow nodded at him, but he turned to Weiss. "You good?"

Weiss rolled up the left leg of her flight suit. The surgery scars will still there, along with some bruising, but she extended and moved the leg without pain. "No problem."

"Okay." Cardin threw her a thumbs-up.

"Anything else?" There was nothing. "All right. Wheels up in thirty. And one last thing…" Qrow winked at them. "For God's sake, let's be careful out there." He looked around, but no one got the reference. Disappointed, Qrow began taking down the map as Pyrrha handed out the cards.

Ruby got up and saw Weiss wince when she bent over to put the card in her kneepad. "You okay?" she whispered.

Weiss smiled and nodded. "Yes, Ruby, for the fourth time, I'm fine." She glanced over her shoulder. "Cardin's been acting weird, though. He's actually not a jerk. He was like that in Japan, too."

Ruby watched the big man talk to Pyrrha. "Beacon changed all of us, Weiss."

* * *

_Near Artux_

_Xinjiang Province, United Republic of China_

_25 July 2001_

"Ruby." The voice was insistent. "Ruby." Suddenly it rose to a shout. " _Ruby!"_

Ruby jerked awake. "What, what?" She felt the stick move in her hand.

"Wake up, idiot." Maria Calavera stopped moving the stick. "Unless you want a blind woman to fly."

"Sorry," Ruby said sheepishly. She looked over to Weiss' Typhoon, wondering if she'd noticed. Weiss gave a hand signal, her right fist descending from her left palm. It meant _get your head out of your ass._ Ruby nodded, opened her visor, and rubbed her eyes. She had a bad tendency to get sleepy when she was bored. And at the moment, Ruby Rose was bored out of her mind.

It had indeed been a milk run. The only excitement had been when the train was leaving the station at Xi'an. All 13 aircraft had flown over as it departed, in close formation, with Weiss' nose only six feet from the right wingtip Sidewinder of Ruby's F-16, and Yang and Blake just as close. Only a quarter of a mile from Ruby's left wingtip was Norn Flight, formating on Pyrrha's F-22. It was quite the sight, one Ruby would always remember. Once clear of Xi'an, they'd assumed the escort formation, moving out of the close pattern to a more combat oriented one, with a lot more spacing. And from there to Hami, it had been one boring flight. Ruby was sure that, if they weren't weaving to keep from outpacing the train, she _would_ have fallen asleep, and no one would've noticed, not even Maria in the back seat.

"At least it's a nice view," she said, and shifted around in her seat a bit. Ruby Flight was at 20,000 feet; the train below was a silvery centipede. Ahead were the snowcovered Tian Shan Mountains: they weren't as impressive as the Himalayas, maybe, but they were still some of the biggest mountains Ruby had ever seen. "Too bad the train didn't go to India or something…flying over Everest sure would've been cool," Ruby remarked.

"Been over it," Maria replied. "Not much to see, really."

Ruby turned in her seat to visually check her flight. Weiss was where she was supposed to be, naturally, five thousand feet below and to the right. She'd noticed Weiss limping a little bit when she'd gotten out of her Typhoon at Hami, but they were all stiff after the eight hours from Xi'an; she hoped her friend was all right. The doctors had been impressed with Weiss' rehab, but they also thought it was rushed. Ruby glanced upwards from the Typhoon. Blake and Yang were at 25,000 feet, their radars on, the F-14 and the F-23 visible against the gray clouds starting to develop over them.

Next she looked to the left. Below them, outlined against the snow of the high Xinjiang plains, was Norn Flight, in roughly the same formation: Pyrrha's Raptor, Oscar's F-18, Ren's new J-10, Nora's long-suffering A-10. She grinned behind her mask as she saw the first three aircraft begin their weave, but the A-10 flew on placidly. Nora didn't need to weave; she'd amused herself by flying level with the train when they'd reached the Gobi Desert, until Qrow told her to knock it off. Ruby turned around her seat to see if she could spot her uncle's modifed F-117, but it was invisible, even to her superb eyesight, which meant he was above the clouds. The stealthy Nighthawk would be hard for the GRIMM to lock onto.

Now she craned her head over the nose of the F-16D. Out ahead, in two expanded boxes weaving ahead of the train, was Cardinal Flight: Cardin's F-15 and Sky Lark's Hawk to the left, Brawnz's F-16 and May's FCK-1 Ching Kuo to the right. It was good to see them again, she reflected: poor Sky was on his third aircraft since she'd first met him at the beginning of Vytal Flag, while Brawnz and May had missed the Battle of Beacon, as Bronze Flight had left before the attack. May had been borrowing a F-16 when she was at Beacon, but now she was in a Ching Kuo, which reminded Ruby of Sun Wukong.

Having accounted for everyone, Ruby checked her navigation display. She yawned. "Four hours to Almaty. Man, I'm bored."

"Not every flight is a fight," Maria told her. "Just enjoy it." In the rearview mirror, Ruby saw Maria looking around. "It _is_ nice. Been a long time since I got to see the world from a fighter."

"Sauron to Alpha Escort." The voice from the CUAF AWACS startled Ruby. "Raid warning. Eight bogeys, angels 18, speed 400, bearing three-zero-zero. Classify as possible GRIMM. Time is 1503 local."

 _Shit,_ Ruby thought, _that's behind and to the right._ "So much for the nice flight."

"Sauron, Qrow," she heard her uncle say. "Distance to bogeys?" He was irritated; the AWACS controller should have passed on that information. The CUAF still had a lot of new personnel in its ranks.

"Sauron to Qrow; sorry. Distance is eighty miles and closing." The AWACS paused. "Raid count now nine bogeys; one bogey bringing up the rear."

"That's strange," Maria commented. "A trailer? GRIMM don't fight like that. Not in my experience."

"Trailer appears to be larger than other bogeys," the AWACS reported.

"Sauron, Qrow. Is trailer a Nevermore?"

"Negative, Qrow; trailer is too small."

Ruby could contain herself no longer. "Qrow, Ruby: permission to turn and identify bogeys?"

"Ruby, Qrow. Permission granted. Norn, backstop Ruby; Cardinal, hold formation and stay with objective."

"Norn, roger," Pyrrha replied.

"Cardinal, roger," Cardin added, though he did not remotely sound pleased by that fact. _Poor Cardin,_ Ruby thought, with a little revenge on the mind, _still getting screwed out of kills._ Beacon and Cardin's bullying hadn't been _that_ long ago.

"Ruby Flight, turn to heading three-zero-zero; let's identify." She waggled her wings at Weiss, then began the wide turn to intercept. She did a quick mental checklist: two external tanks, four AIM-120 AMRAAMs, two AIM-9 Sidewinders, and her luggage pod on the centerline. She'd dump the external tanks as soon as the fight started— _the taxpayers must hate me,_ she mused, given how many times she'd cleaned off her tanks—but she needed to keep the pod, which luckily was streamlined. That had her spare uniforms and her souvenirs from Japan in it. Priorities were priorities, after all.

A quick thought: Oscar had JINN. It was in his cockpit, rather than a luggage pod, but they had to keep Oscar alive. Of course, Ruby smiled, there were _other_ good reasons to keep Oscar alive.

"Ruby Flight, check in," she called out as they got onto the new heading.

"Weiss."

"Blake."

"Yang!"

"Sauron, Blake. Locking up on lead bogeys." Ruby grinned savagely: _Gambol Shroud_ was packing two Phoenixes today.

"Blake, Sauron. Negative, negative! Targets are still unidentified."

Blake evidently bit her lip on that one, but Qrow didn't. Ruby still couldn't see him. "Sauron, Qrow, bullshit! These assholes are GRIMM!"

"Wait one, Qrow." The controller sounded unsure. He was going by the book, but the book was too slow. Ruby reached forward and switched on her radar. It quickly picked up the formation; the range was now forty miles and closing rapidly.

"Ruby, Pyrrha. Norn is low and left, three miles." A quick glance: the four aircraft of Norn Flight were coming in for support.

"Sauron, Ruby, range is now thirty miles! I'm firing at twenty-five whether or not you've identified or not!" Ruby shouted. She locked up on the lead bogey with an AMRAAM. Her finger came off the radio button. "Maria, you ready?"

"Ready." There was not a nuance of fear in Maria Calavera's voice; instead, she sounded excited.

There was no answer, and Ruby fumed as the closing rate increased. She knew Blake must be about ready to scream; the AWACS' hesitation had robbed the Tomcat of its incredible reach. Finally, the controller came on the net. "Alpha Escort, Sauron. Classify Raid One as bandits, repeat, bandits. Raid count is nine GRIMM, unknown type. Angels 16, speed 350, bearing now zero-one-zero, range 25. Cleared to engage. Time is 1303 local."

"Ruby, Fox Three!" she yelled, and pulled the trigger. An AMRAAM shot off the rails, leaving almost no smoke to betray its passage.

The GRIMM formation went into chaos as their radar warning equipment picked up Ruby Flight's radars. Four turned towards Ruby Flight, but the other four dived into a slight right turn, towards Norn Flight. Ruby squinted, then saw the GRIMM. "Tally-ho on the bandits!" she called out. "Twelve o'clock low—splash one!" she cheered, as a sudden blossom of orange betrayed her missile hit.

"Yang, Fox Three!" Ruby caught a glimpse of the F-23 firing off an AMRAAM. She'd exchanged the lead with Blake.

"Visor down!" Maria shouted, and Ruby quickly shut hers. Then they were in the merge. "One GRIMM passing down the left, ten o'clock low!"

"How the hell do you know _that?"_ was all Ruby had time to say, as she spotted another GRIMM angling in from one o'clock. Maria was supposed to be functionally blind; Ruby had no idea how the former GRIMM Reaper was seeing aircraft traveling at near supersonic speeds. Ruby turned into the one on her right, only for it to vanish in an explosion; Yang's missile had hit.

"Alpha Escort, be advised, GRIMM are Manticores!" Blake yelled over the open channel.

 _Manticores,_ Ruby thought. They'd heard about those; China was the only place they had been identified so far. Manticores, like the Beringals, were upgraded Beowolves, with swept wings, twin engines, and better armor.

"That GRIMM is getting in behind us!" Maria told Ruby. In the mirrors, Ruby could see the old woman twisting around in her seat, keeping her eye on the Manticore. "Do some of that pilot shit!"

"Backseat driver!" Ruby yelled back, and broke left. Before the Manticore could make the turn, it exploded. Under the burning remains of the drone swept Weiss' Typhoon. "You're clear, Ruby. Thank me later."

One Manticore charged Yang, who rapidly switched from AMRAAMs to Sidewinders, realized even that was too close, and switched to guns. Both of them fired at the same time, and Yang rolled to avoid the cannon shells that swept under the Black Widow. She scored a glancing hit as the GRIMM flew past, enough to see pieces fly off the Manticore. "Blake, take him!"

Blake clicked the mike twice in response and fired two Sidewinders. "Blake, Fox Two." One missile couldn't lock and flew off; the other hit, the missile going down the intake of the Manticore. Smoke and flames shot out the exhausts, and the GRIMM went into a shallow dive that terminated in the snowy fields below. "Splash three."

Yang went into a hard right turn. "Good to see you're not rusty, Blake!" she laughed over the strain of the G-forces.

* * *

Pyrrha punched off her drop tanks, returning the Raptor to its streamlined, stealthy form. The four Manticores that had begun to engage Norn Flight split up. One was a trifle slow. "Pyrrha, Fox Three," she called out, her voice flat. Nothing else existed now but the combat. The AMRAAM crossed the distance and another Manticore blew apart.

"Bandit, two o'clock high!" Oscar exclaimed. "It's going after Ruby Flight! I'm on it!"

"Oscar, hold formation," Pyrrha snapped. She was not risking him, not with JINN onboard. "Manticore, eleven o'clock low, crossing in front of us. Ren, engage."

"Roger." Pyrrha watched as Ren turned hard to get in behind the GRIMM. "Ren, Fox Two." A Sidewinder snaked out from the J-10 and hit the Manticore. It staggered but didn't go down, breaking away. Ren stayed with it and finished it off with another Sidewinder.

The fourth Manticore turned to get in behind Ren. It hadn't noticed Nora, who was hedgehopping over two lines of trees. As soon as the GRIMM turned, she poured on the speed, closed the distance, and opened fire. The GAU-8 shredded the Manticore. "Yeah, baby!" Nora crowed. "Nora, splash five!"

Pyrrha turned back towards the last Manticore, which looked to be headed for Ruby. As she lined up for a shot, it suddenly dived at full speed, pulling out low and now headed for the train; the move on Ruby had been a feint. _A feint?_ Pyrrha asked herself. _How is that? GRIMM can't think._ "Ruby, Pyrrha; one Manticore headed for the train."

"Weiss here; I'm on it." Weiss dived down behind the GRIMM. "DUST, IRIS," she spoke. The DUST targeting system on _Myrtenaster_ —she realized just how much she'd missed this—automatically switched to the advanced short-range missiles the Typhoon carried. She'd already used an IRIS to get her first GRIMM of the battle, firing it off-boresight, using the helmet-mounted sight—she'd missed that, too. Her finger tightened on the trigger.

The Manticore suddenly broke left, hard, trying to force Weiss into an overshoot. Weiss should have simply turned her head in that direction, allowing the IRIS to track for another off-boresight shot. But in the heat of the moment, she reacted instinctively: she stepped down hard on the left rudder pedal to keep the GRIMM on her nose. Pain shot up her leg straight to her brain, and she involuntarily screamed, leveling the Typhoon. The Manticore, noticing its attacker had made a mistake, reversed its break and fell in behind Weiss, firing its cannon. Weiss made a right break this time, which wasn't painful, but the GRIMM was getting closer.

Ruby dived in, opening fire with her own cannon. The Vulcan ripped away the Manticore's left wing, throwing it into a fatal spiral; it exploded against a hill a second later. Ruby pulled back on the stick, missing the ground herself by mere feet, her afterburner blowing snow away in her wake. "Woo, doggies! Ruby, splash six—you're clear, Weiss! Thank me later!" She sucked in draughts of oxygen. "Sorry about that, Maria," she said on the intercom. "You okay?"

"Are you kidding?" Maria laughed. "This is the most fun I've had in a decade!"

"Ruby Flight, rejoin; Sauron, all bandits—" She was cut off by a yell from Cardin. "Four bandits, two o'clock high!"

* * *

Cardin had chafed under Qrow's order, though he knew it was the correct one: they had to protect the train. When he'd heard Pyrrha's call that the surviving Manticore was making a run, he'd prepared to turn Cardinal Flight back into it, but as he'd looked around, he saw four dark shapes against the snowy mountains. It was four more Manticores: the AWACS had lost them in the mountains, an easy thing to do with radar against ground clutter like the Tian Shans. He called out the new bandits, then addressed his flight. "Cardinals, let's take 'em! Check in!"

"Sky!" As Cardin whipped the F-15 to the right, Sky dropped down to cover him, behind and to the left.

"Brawnz!" He was coming around to the right as well.

"May—oh shit! Bandits, bandits, eleven low!" she shouted.

Cardin looked in that direction as four more Manticores suddenly roared out of a mountain valley. They'd been waiting for Cardinal to turn and engage the first flight, to hit them in the flank. The ambush had been tripped early, but it shouldn't have happened at all. _GRIMM can't think!_ Cardin told himself, unknowingly echoing Pyrrha's thoughts. "Cardinals, engage the GRIMM at eleven o'clock!" They were the bigger threat.

They were also much closer. The two flights merged only a second later. May turned to find herself head-to-head with a Manticore. She opened fire, but the GRIMM was faster. Its cannon pounded the FCK-1, tearing through the engines and wings. Fuel exploded into flames. "I'm hit! I'm hit! Oh God—" May's voice rose to a scream, one cut off as the Ching Kuo exploded.

Brawnz broke away and climbed, throwing off the Manticore that engaged him. "May's down!" he called out. "No chute!" The mourning would have to wait: the Manticores had closed too fast on Cardin and Sky; the two sides had shot past each other, and were now turning to reengage. Brawnz made a quick look behind him: the Manticore that had killed May Zedong was turning onto him.

"Brawnz, Pyrrha, break left." He didn't question the order: the F-16 snapped over. The Manticore began to follow, then exploded. "Pyrrha, splash seven." He saw the F-22 go overhead, the F-18 trying to keep up. "Two more bandits, eleven o'clock low. Raid count now eleven."

* * *

Qrow had dropped down below the overcast and dipped the nose of the F-117. The battle was a swirling melee, and he was glad for Pyrrha's experience; she could keep the number of GRIMM in her head. The Silk Road train was at full speed, racing down the track, but it was also racing right into the battle between Cardinal Flight and the newly arrived Manticores.

 _This doesn't make any damn sense. These GRIMM are fighting smart, and they usually don't…unless something's controlling them._ He thought about Salem, but dismissed that; he doubted she would risk herself in a battle, and in any case, he was fairly certain Salem wasn't a pilot.

Then he remembered the trailing GRIMM, the one the AWACS had picked up and said wasn't a Nevermore. "Sauron, Qrow. Where's that trailer?"

"Qrow, Sauron, trailer is at your one o'clock high, about ten miles, behind Raid-Two, angels thirty." The controller was learning fast; that was exactly the information Qrow needed. He acknowledged and climbed back above the overcast. Qrow's eyesight wasn't quite as good as Ruby's, but it was a big target. _Some sort of command and control bird, like a GRIMM AWACS? Makes sense._ Whatever it was, it was hanging back, at higher altitudes than GRIMM usually traveled.

It could wait. Qrow dived back below the overcast. It was time he got in the fight. He opened the throttle; the Nighthawk's speed wasn't impressive, but he had the advantage of altitude and the fact that none of the GRIMM evidently detected him. As the four Manticores began angling for the train, he engaged the two leftmost drones, and unloaded four Sidewinders. "Qrow, Fox Two multiple," he said, and watched the Sidewinders knock both Manticores out of the sky. It left him with only two more AIM-9s and the gun, but it was evening the odds. The last two Manticores still hadn't seen him, but he was out of position to engage.

Blake and Yang weren't. The two charged the Manticores, firing AMRAAMs. The last two Manticores of Raid-Three were blown out of the sky.

"That's more like it," Qrow grinned. "Ruby Flight, join on me." He turned to the right and went into a shallow climb. They had to destroy the command and control GRIMM…or whatever it was. "Norns, help Cardinal."

* * *

"Sky, stay with me!" Cardin shouted. The two Manticores were coming in to engage from the front. He switched to guns; the knife fight was not something the F-15 was great at, but it could more than hold its own. He was also enraged: Cardin wanted to put some blood on the walls.

"Cardin, Brawnz! Manticore at your six!" Brawnz's break had taken him out of the fight, and he was turning to get back into it. He saw the GRIMM dropping in behind Cardin and Sky.

Sky saw it as well, opened his speedbrakes, and threw the Hawk into a barrel roll to kill more of his speed. The Manticore overshot, and he rolled in behind it, firing two Sidewinders. Both hit, blowing the GRIMM apart. "Got him! Sky, splash eight!" It was actually splash twelve or so, but everyone had lost count.

Cardin exchanged fire with the two Manticore, which went past both sides of the F-15. One detected Sky and kept firing. Cannon shells smashed into the Hawk's tail and engine as it went past. Sky felt the aircraft pitch up and heard the engine die. "Oh, for fuck's sake, not again!" He tried to use as much airspeed as he had left to coax the dying Hawk higher, then sighed, let out a string of curses in Malaysian, and ejected.

"Sky's down!" Brawnz reported. "Good chute!" Even though it meant abandoning his run on the Manticore, he broke off his attack to cover Sky's parachute; GRIMM didn't normally attack parachutes, but these GRIMM were different, and Brawnz wasn't losing another wingperson.

Cardin was also cursing, below his breath: it was happening again. The first version of Cardinal Flight had been nearly wiped out at Beacon, and now the second was suffering the same fate. He threw the F-15 into a turn that caused the aircraft to audibly groan, but now he was behind both Manticores. "Cardin, Pyrrha," he heard the call. "Two Manticores moving into your six." He ignored it: Cardin didn't care anymore; he was going to kill _something_ before they got him.

"Cardin, Fox Three." He pulled the trigger twice. Two AMRAAMs shot off the rails. He watched them for a second before going into another punishing high-G turn. One hit and another GRIMM exploded; the other missed, but in trying to evade the missile, the Manticore flew into a mountain.

Pyrrha thrust-vectored the Raptor into a turn no other aircraft could duplicate. "Pyrrha, Fox Two." Two Sidewinders dropped from the weapons bays underneath the F-22's intakes and destroyed one GRIMM behind the F-15. She was out of position for the second. "Oscar, take it."

"Roger that!" Oscar had dutifully stayed on Pyrrha's wing, sparing some choice cuss words for the JINN computer strapped to his lap. The Manticore was climbing, but that made it a better target. "Oscar, Fox Three!" The last Manticore died in a fireball. "Splash…uh, whatever!"

"Splash eighteen," Pyrrha put in. "All Manticores destroyed."

Cardin let out a war whoop: Sky Lark might be again drifting down in a parachute, and May Zedong might be dead, but she had been avenged. "Pyrrha, Cardin, I'm going to check on the train." He dipped his wing and dropped down to fly over it. The train was on a straightaway and the engineer had the throttle wide open. They had no way to talk to the train crew—an oversight no one had thought of until after they'd taken off—so Cardin flew ahead to where the crew could see him out of the airliner-like windows of the engine, and waggled his wings to let them know there was no longer a threat.

"Cardin, _TUNNEL!"_ Oscar screamed. Cardin looked up to see the sheer side of a mountain directly in front of him, and the opening of the world's longest tunnel beneath. He let out an oath and hauled the stick back into his lap, slamming the throttle to the stops.

The F-15 shot upwards. It missed the rock face. It didn't, however, miss the line of fir trees atop the mountain's highest ridge. Cardin smashed through the trees at over four hundred miles an hour.

* * *

"Tally-ho," Qrow reported. "Classify target as a GRIMM, unknown type." It resembled a Nevermore, in that it used the same blended wing design, but it was smaller. It shared the Nevermore's turrets, however, because two of them appeared and began chunking missiles at the onrushing Ruby Flight. None guided on Qrow, but Ruby Flight scattered in clouds of chaff and flares. "Sauron, Qrow, give this thing the reporting name of Sphinx." It occurred to Qrow that he was naming a lot of GRIMM lately.

"Rubies, Qrow," he radioed. "Let's be smart here. This thing is. Yang, Blake, I want you to go straight at it, get its attention. Ruby, Weiss, you take it from the north. If it survives, I'll finish it off."

"Qrow, this is Weiss. I'm having some…mechanical issues here. Cannot assist." Her voice was full of pain. Qrow looked around: he could see Ruby's F-16, but not the Typhoon.

"Roger that. Ruby, you hit it, and I'll clean up."

"Roger." Ruby put aside her concern for Weiss and split out to the north.

"Yang, Blake, go."

"Roger!" Yang said, and ran up the F-23 to full speed, going supersonic. Blake did the same, but as she did, she activated _Gambol Shroud's_ holograms, dropping chaff as she did so. To the Sphinx, there were now five targets directly ahead. The turrets spit missiles again, but could not lock on the stealthy Black Widow; Blake switched off the holograms, and the missiles, confused, lost lock and spiraled past harmlessly.

"Nail 'em, Ruby!" Qrow yelled. Ruby clicked the mike twice and fired two AMRAAMs. "Ruby, Fox Three on the Sphinx!" She broke off before the turrets could acquire her, but both missiles hit. The Sphinx rocked, flames trailed behind it, but it wasn't going down.

Qrow dived, turned, and came up behind it. The Sphinx's engines were shrouded, like his own, but the flames gave off plenty of heat. "Qrow, Fox Two." He fired his last two Sidewinders. Both guided and added their damage. He thought for a moment he was going to need to finish it with the gun, but then the Sphinx staggered, one wing came off, and the GRIMM spiraled down through the clouds. He followed it down and watched it crash. "Splash, er, eighteen. All bandits splashed."

"Sauron to Alpha Escort, Bravo Zulu." Qrow smiled; the code for well done. "SAR on the way."

"Roger that. Pyrrha, Qrow, how's the train?"

"In the tunnel," Pyrrha reported. "But we have a problem here."

* * *

Cardin evaluated his situation. In short, it was terrible. The tough F-15 had survived the collision with the trees, but assorted pine needles, bark and splinters had been sucked down the intakes. The twin Pratt and Whitney turbofans were beginning to grind themselves into scrap, fanblades smashed and bent by the debris. He was going to lose power in seconds. The climb had put him at 20,000 feet and he was able to level out, but he looked out of the canopy: if he ejected here, he would come down in the rugged Tien Shans. If he survived the landing, he might freeze to death before the SAR forces found him. Cardin did some quick math in his head: the F-15 had a lot of lift, so he could glide quite a ways. He looked down at his kneepad: there was an emergency airfield at Chundzha, on the other side of the mountains. Quickly, he turned in that direction while he still had power left. He then reached out and punched a red button on his instrument panel. It jettisoned everything: remaining missiles, even the pylons. He began dumping fuel as well; he had to shed as much weight as he could.

Then both engines flamed out. He jerked the throttle back to idle, to prevent any more damage, and deployed the ram-air generator. A little fan dropped out of the F-15's belly, the airflow powering the fan, which at least kept the power running. His instruments would still function, and the fly-by-wire microprocessors would keep the Eagle in the air.

He saw Pyrrha come up alongside, her nose held high to maintain station. "Cardin, Pyrrha. Condition?"

"Bad. Both engines are gone. I'm going to have to glide to Chundzha." He did more calculations, and laughed humorlessly. "Except I'm not going to make it." He tightened his straps. "Going to punch."

"Not yet." Pyrrha did some math of her own; Cardin was right, his glide would terminate in the ridges that marked the western limit of the Tien Shans. But there was another option. "Hold her steady." Pyrrha took a deep breath, dropped down, and positioned the Raptor below and behind the F-15. "Cardin, drop your tailhook."

"Roger." He had no idea what that would accomplish, but he pulled back the lever all the same. The tailhook was controlled by gravity and dropped, locking into place. Oscar had come up alongside as well, and his breath caught in his throat.

"Steady, Cardin," Pyrrha repeated. She ignored the sweat running out from under her helmet. Now she truly had to become part of the airplane. Her hands manipulated the stick and throttle; her vision narrowed to the tailhook. Carefully, by inches, she moved the F-22 up to the tailhook, then put the nose against it. There was an audible, metallic screech as it rode up the nose to hit her windscreen, and a crack appeared. Pyrrha held the aircraft steady. "Got it," she puffed out.

"Oh my God." Oscar's eyes were huge. "Cardin, Oscar, don't move that stick."

"What the hell is going on back there?" the other pilot called out. He saw his airspeed drop…and then remain steady.

"Pyrrha's _pushing_ you," Oscar said in disbelief.

"She's doing _what?"_

"Radio silence," Pyrrha instructed. "This isn't as easy as it looks." It was all she could do to hold the tailhook in place. It was as tough as the hooks used on Navy aircraft, but if it rode up any further, it would probably go through the canopy and possibly impale her. If it rode any lower, she'd lose it and might not be able to get back in position. The turbulence from the mountains below didn't help, and there was only four feet separating her canopy from the dead engines of the F-15. She was using the cushion of air caused by her own aircraft to "push" Cardin out of the mountains. "Distance to Chundzha," she said, her breathing labored.

"Thirty miles," Cardin reported.

"I'll hold for another five minutes. Then it's up to you."

"Jesus, Pyrrha…" Cardin held the stick in a death grip, afraid to breathe.

The next five minutes were an eternity. Pyrrha didn't know it, but behind her was a procession of Ruby and Norn Flights, all of them watching in awe. Finally, Pyrrha took a deep breath, and let her airspeed drop off a little, then pushed the stick down. The tailhook missed her canopy by a few inches. "You're clear, Cardin."

"Thanks. Thanks so much." Cardin was not ashamed that there were tears drifting over his mask.

"Thank me later."

Now it was up to Cardin. He toggled the radio, but Ren was already communicating with the field at Chundzha; the controller didn't speak English, but he spoke Chinese. It was a single asphalt strip, built for little commuter airliners, but it was all that was available. Cardin dropped his landing gear; all three locked in place. He kept the nose high.

"Cardin, Nora. I'll stay with you all the way down." The A-10 flew up alongside, the only one of the aircraft able to get that slow without stalling. "You're at 200 feet…180…speed 160…" Cardin locked onto Nora's voice like a drowning man grabbing a life preserver. "Speedbrake," she told him, and he opened the speed brake. The speed fell off considerably now, but he was almost there. "Flare, flare, flare!" she yelled.

Cardin pulled the nose a little higher, and let the F-15 sink. He felt the mains hit the runway, then the nose dropped and the gear struck the runway hard. He stood on the brakes as the runway rapidly disappeared beneath; Cardin had a brief impression of men hanging onto ancient fire trucks, watching stunned as the fighter hurtled down the runway. He went into the overrun, and Cardin grabbed the eject handle between his legs…but then, as the nose gear buried itself in the soft soil beyond, the F-15 finally stopped. Cardin hung forward in his straps. "Cardin to Rubies and Norns. I'm stopped; I'm okay." He began laughing with the sheer feeling of being alive, and punched a fist into the air as Nora roared overhead, throwing her A-10 into a victory roll.

He quickly unstrapped and raised the canopy. It didn't go up all the way, so he used his back to get it up enough to jump out. It wasn't much of a drop; the nosewheel was buried. He rolled to his feet and dusted himself. A fireman ran up to him.

"Hi," Cardin said with a grin. "Any of you guys speak English?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I ended up having to rewrite the first half of the dogfight, as I sort of forgot Maria was along for the ride. Pyrrha's manuever at the end is based on a real-life incident over Vietnam: Pardo's Push. When Bob Pardo's wingman F-4 was hit by flak and lost power, Pardo did the same thing Pyrrha does here with his F-4, and "pushed" his wingman to a safe bailout zone over Laos. Pardo's own F-4 had been hit too, and was going on one engine, so he had to bail out as well. All four crew survived from both aircraft. Pardo was actually chewed out for the "stunt," but 20 years later, the USAF awarded him the Silver Star. It's now legendary in the fighter pilot community, so I borrowed it for "Pyrrha's Push."
> 
> The F-15 is actually that tough. An Israeli pilot lost the entire right wing in a midair collision, and somehow managed to land it safely.


	8. Until the End of the World

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oscar is curious about his past, so despite his orders, he activates JINN. But will Oscar and Ruby Flight regret knowing the truth?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oddly appropriate that the longest chapter of RWBY is also (probably) the longest chapter of this story. It's a long one, but it tells the story of Ozpin and Salem in this world.
> 
> I tried to make the Cuban Missile Crisis segments as accurate as possible. The only real person in this story is Allen Dulles; everyone else that has a speaking part is fictional. (Naturally, Kennedy, Khrushchev, etc. were real people too.) It was indeed that close to global nuclear war, so the events are fairly plausible. I may be wrong about the road at Guantanamo; I don't think that actually exists.
> 
> Hold on tight.

_Almaty International Airport Hotel_

_Almaty, Republic of Kazakhstan_

_25 July 2001_

"Still can't believe Pyrrha did that!" Ruby Rose gushed. "I'm putting her in for the CMH! Not even joking."

"You _do_ know that it's not actually called the Congressional Medal of Honor." Weiss sucked in her breath as her left leg tweaked a little. "It's just…ow…the Medal of Honor. I'm German, and even _I_ know that."

"Well, hello Miss Smarty Pants!" Ruby stuck her tongue out at her. "Still going to do it. Okay, one more flight of stairs."

" _Wunderlich._ " Weiss had one arm around Ruby and another around Oscar as they helped her hobble up the stairs.

"You sure you're going to be able to fly tomorrow?" Oscar asked.

"Sure," Weiss replied, though she was gritting her teeth, "I'll just ice it up tonight. No problem."

Ruby looked at her friend with concern, but eventually they got up the stairs, and unlocked her room. The people of Kazakhstan loved Huntsmen and Huntresses, especially their cash, and had given Ruby and Norn Flight an entire floor of the airport hotel. Cardin had been flown back to China to rejoin what was left of Cardinal Flight; they would not be going the rest of the way to Europe. Each pilot had gotten their own room, though Ren and Nora insisted on sharing. Somehow the luggage pods on the aircraft had not been torn off in the battle, so everyone still had a change of clothes and personal items. In Oscar's duffel bag, slung over one shoulder, was JINN.

Once on level ground, Weiss shrugged off Oscar and Ruby and limped into her room. "I knew you were overdoing it," Ruby admonished.

"Ruby, I'm fine. I just strained the ligaments a bit. I'll be all right." To prove it, she grabbed her duffel off Ruby's shoulder and carried it into the room. She looked around. "Well, it's not the Adlon in Berlin, but I suppose it'll do." The hotel room did look a little run down: it had been built in the Soviet era, forty years previously; the window provided a nice overlook of the airport, but the wallpaper was peeling in places, and the décor was clearly meant to evoke a bit of Americana—as in a 1970s-era Holiday Inn. Weiss put her bag down on the orangish carpet, and lifted the covers on the bed to look for bedbugs. "I'm glad I don't have a black light. This place would probably look like a Jackson Pollock painting."

Ruby had no idea who or what Weiss was talking about. "Guess it's not up to an heiress' standards." She winked to show it was a joke.

Weiss sniffed a laugh. " _Former_ heiress. And I've been in worse." Being imprisoned in Raven's camp had given her a new appreciation for beds in any form. She flopped onto the bed, which groaned alarmingly.

"Want me to get you some ice?" Oscar held up the empty ice bucket.

"Oscar, please. Thank you, but I'm fine."

Ruby tugged at Oscar's shoulder. "C'mon, Oscar. Weissy's being all independent on us." Weiss tapped her forehead with her index finger—an insult in Germany—and they left.

Ruby's room was next to Weiss, naturally, but Oscar's was down the hall, wedged in between Blake and Qrow. Ruby looked down the hallway and waved to Pyrrha, who waved back and trudged further down. The Greek girl looked utterly spent; Yang had to lift her out of her F-22. "Hope she doesn't pass out before she gets to her bed," Ruby commented.

"She really is incredible," Oscar said, watching her.

Ruby felt an odd bit of jealousy at that comment, but fought it off. "Thanks for your help with Weiss."

He laughed. "No worries. It was the least I could do."

"Well…good night. I think we'll sleep in tomorrow, so we'll get up around 0800."

"Sounds good."

They stared at each other for a long minute, both seized with awkwardness. Neither Ruby nor Oscar were exactly the makeout queen and king of their respective high schools; both were attracted to each other, but were far too anxious to simply ask the other for what both were thinking about. Instead, Oscar gave a cross between a shrug and a bow, said "See you in the morning," and walked down the hall to his room. _Dammit!_ he cursed himself.

_Dammit,_ Ruby thought, and opened the door to her room.

* * *

Oscar got settled in; his room was an exact copy of Weiss', down to the "artwork" on the wall that was obviously cut out of a magazine and framed. He didn't begrudge it; the Kazakhs were not exactly awash in money. Their nation survived by being between Iran and China, with enough oil reserves to keep themselves afloat. Historically, Kazakh land extended far to the northwest, but GRIMM had forced them back into the mountains after getting their de facto independence after the Third World War. Luckily for them, the only significant nuclear strike on their territory was at Baikonur, the former Cosmodrome. Also luckily, GRIMM tended to concentrate more to either side of their territory, and Kazakhstan survived in the eye of the storm.

The hotel extended to the pilots complimentary room service, and Oscar called down for some dinner while he unpacked. He'd stayed in worse, too: his room in the barn back in Nebraska was no fancier than this.

Oscar reached into his flight suit pocket and pulled out a picture. In theory, pilots were supposed to "sanitize" their wallet and clothes before taking off, leaving behind all identifying items like personal pictures; pilots were required to fly with their military ID and that was all. Under the Code of Conduct, it was name, rank, serial number. The rule was generally ignored, because GRIMM didn't exactly take prisoners. He ran his hand over it. It was a picture of himself and his mother, Veronica Pine. She'd been so proud of him when he'd been accepted for Navy flight training, but clearly she'd also been hiding the secret of who his father was for Oscar's entire life. He couldn't bring himself to hate her for it—if Rissa Arashikaze was any indication, Ozpin had been neck deep in black operations, and assuming he'd even told Veronica anything about it, she obviously had to keep it very secret.

Oscar put the picture back in his flight suit. Assuming he lived long enough to get back to Pilger, he'd have to ask his mother more about Ozpin. Arashikaze had been evasive about their relationship, and had only given him a basic biography of his father, which was impressive enough. As he changed into a T-shirt and shorts, he wondered how his parents had met.

_I'll have to ask Mom about that sometime,_ he thought, and stuffed his flight suit back into the duffel. His hands brushed up against the cold metal of the JINN console. He stopped, and pulled the console out. "I wonder if…" he said aloud, his voice trailing off. He remembered Arashikaze's orders, but the temptation was strong. Would anyone know? Would it really get him court-martialed? After all, Ozpin _was_ his father; he deserved to know something about the man.

Wrestling with his conscience and not a small amount of fear, Oscar closed the curtains and set JINN on the little nightstand. He unhooked the telephone and even unplugged it, and made sure his cellphone was off. _This is stupid,_ he warned himself. _That little CIA woman is going to murder me. Probably slowly._ Still, he opened the console anyway; it looked like the GameBoy he had as a kid. He hesitated, then laughed at himself. A little keyboard folded out, with a power button at the upper left, but even if he turned the thing on, he didn't have the access codes. He blew out his breath and stared at the screen. "Yeah. Not like you'd probably know anyway, JINN."

He went to put it back in its console, but suddenly the screen clicked on, and he heard the computer power up. As Oscar watched in shock and terror, lasers shot out of the screen and played on the ceiling. The lasers came together and slowly coalesced into the image of a naked woman with blue skin and pointed ears. She stared down at Oscar and smiled. "Good evening," she said, in a voice that was tinny and yet sultry at the same time. "I am JINN. What can I do for you?"

* * *

Yang stripped off her flight suit and stretched in her underwear. "Man, I need to shower before I curdle." She looked over and sighed. "Blake, you don't have to do that."

"I'm…I'm just trying to help." Blake was unpacking Yang's duffel.

Yang went over and pulled out a change of underwear before Blake could stop her. "Blake, I appreciate it, but I'm not a cripple. Hell, Weiss probably needs more help than I do. Okay?"

Blake's ears flattened against her head and she looked away. "You're right. Sorry." She chuckled. "Guess I just feel the need to help _somebody._ "

"Well, after I shower, we can run down to the airport bar; see if Almaty's got anything like a nightlife." She leaned over and ostentatiously sniffed. "And Blakey, no offense, but you're stinky. Let's go shower." Blake's eyes widened. Yang made a face. "Not together. _Definitely_ not together."

"Whoooaa," Ruby said, standing in the open doorway. There was a long box under her arm. "What did _I_ walk in on?"

Yang reached out and pulled Blake to her side. "Blake and I are going to shower together and make sweet lesbian love. Want to join in? We can get Weiss and have a Ruby Flight orgy. I'm okay with incest. You're pretty damn hot, Rubes."

Ruby looked stunned and nauseated at the same time. "What the actual…"

Yang let go of Blake, who was now the same shade as _Crescent Rose's_ trim, and shrugged, pointing to the box under Ruby's arm. "Or we can play Monopoly. You know, I'm good either way."

Before either her sister or her best friend could reply, Qrow leaned into the doorway. In one hand was a bottle of vodka. "Well, this is a touching scene."

Ruby was very glad her uncle was there. She knew Yang was not serious, but it was still enough to make her a little sick. "Oh hey, Uncle Qrow." She held up Monopoly. "Wanna play?"

"Kick your butts? Sure." Qrow stripped the sealant off the top of the vodka. He was more of a poker player, but Monopoly would do. Strike Flight had played it a lot, until one night at Lakenheath when Summer and Raven had come to blows.

"Cool!" Ruby set the box down on Yang's bed. "I'll go get Oscar."

"Where's Maria?" Qrow asked.

Ruby pointed down. "The hotel gave her a room on the first floor. I imagine she's sound asleep by now."

* * *

In actuality, Maria Calavera was at the airport bar. She swirled the tequila in the glass, surprised to find some in Kazakhstan. She noticed a goateed, sophisticated-looking older man staring at her from down the bar. She raised the glass to him. He got up and took the barstool next to her. "How are _you?"_ she smiled.

* * *

Ruby went over and knocked on the door. There was no answer, but she thought she heard voices. With about as much tact and respect for privacy as her sister, Ruby opened the door and looked in. "Hey, Oscar, we're getting together for some Monopoly, you want to…uh…" She had stepped inside the room, and saw him sitting on his bed, staring at some sort of holographic projection, which was pretty impressive on its own. Then Ruby realized the hologram was of a naked woman, which raised all sorts of possibilities, all of them meaning she'd interrupted something. "Er…" She was torn between quietly retreating, screaming, or punching Oscar for watching porn in his room.

Oscar turned to her and pointed at the hologram. "Ruby, uh…this…this is not what it looks like…"

The hologram turned towards Ruby. It blinked a few times, then smiled. "Good evening, Captain Ruby Rose. I am JINN."

Ruby had left the door wide open, and Blake walked in. "Ruby, I'm going to grab a shower and _holy shit!"_ She pointed at JINN. "What is _that?"_

The hologram turned to the Faunus and once more blinked a few times. "Good evening, Captain Blake Belladonna. I am JINN."

Blake, showing more forethought than either Oscar or Ruby, slammed the door behind her. She stalked forward. "Shut that thing off!" she snapped. "Good God, Oscar! What the hell are you thinking? Arashikaze's going to have you breaking rocks until you're a hundred!"

"I didn't mean to!" Oscar tried to explain. "I just…it turned itself on…" That wasn't quite true, but it wasn't a lie, either.

"You shouldn't even have it open!" Blake snatched up the console. Ruby noticed JINN was watching her with an almost amused look, though that could have been a trick of the light; it wasn't like the AI was sentient. She hoped. "How does it even know who I am?"

"I was programmed with the identities of Ruby Flight at 2105 Hours Zulu, 13 May 2001," JINN answered. "It was done remotely by Captain Oscar Ozpin, US Navy."

Blake stopped and looked up at the hologram. "Why?" She finally noticed something else. "And why are you _naked?"_

"To answer your first query: Captain Ozpin entered the identities of all members of flights assigned for Vytal Flag, with special emphasis on Ruby Flight. I do not have the information as to why. To answer the second query: my appearance is reminscent of the genie in the story of _Aladdin and the Enchanted Lamp._ Captain Ozpin believed that the use of the feminine would make people more likely to listen to me, while my nudity would get people's attention. If you find my nudity offensive, I have a censoring function. Would you like to engage the censoring function?"

"Yeah, please!" Ruby half-yelled. She didn't know what was worse: having a buck naked, top secret hologram looming over them, or the fact that JINN had a _much_ better figure than she did. A white toga appeared around JINN, covering her breasts and crotch. "Oscar, why did you switch the damn thing on?"

"He didn't," JINN once more said, before Oscar could reply. "I have a proximity function and activate when my designation is spoken. My activation sequence is also triggered by certain voice patterns. Ensign Oscar Pine is one of those voices."

Oscar jumped to his feet. "Me? Why?"

JINN's expression turned somber. "Captain Ozpin was your father. He programmed me to tell you about him should we ever meet."

"How did you know what my voice sounded like?"

"Your voice was recorded during a presentation you gave at Pensacola on 11 December 2000. Captain Ozpin was in attendance for that reason." She paused. "Would you like to learn about your father, Ensign Pine? I am cleared to give you that information."

Ruby put out a hand. "Oscar, wait. I want to get Yang and Uncle Qrow."

Blake covered her eyes with a hand. "Ruby, we're in enough trouble as it is. Arashikaze's going to kill us all for this."

"In for a penny, in for a pound, Blake. Besides…didn't you want to know what Ozpin's deal was?"

Truth to tell, Blake was very curious about the mysterious commander of Joint Base Beacon, but she also knew the proverb about curious cats. "All right. Why not. We can keep each other company at Leavenworth."

"Be right back." Ruby ran out the door.

* * *

"Can't believe we're doing this," Qrow said, sitting crosslegged on the floor. "God, Rissa's going to have us all thrown to sharks or something. Besides, I already know some of this."

"Do you know the whole story?" Ruby countered. "Uncle Qrow, aren't you curious who Ozpin and Salem really are?"

Qrow took a long drink of the vodka. "Yeah," he said at length.

"Do we want to tell the others?" Blake asked, switching off the lights.

"Pyrrha's out, and Ren and Nora are probably banging each other into a stupor," Yang replied. "Besides, this way Arashikaze can't hang _all_ of us."

Ruby sat down next to her sister. It felt like they were getting ready to watch a movie, or old-time slides with their dad back home. JINN had remained motionless, that fey smile still on her lips. She nodded to Oscar, who took a deep breath. "JINN?" he said.

Immediately her attention shifted to him. "Yes, Ensign Pine?"

"Tell us about Captain Ozpin…and Salem."

JINN was static for a moment, and for a second Ruby wondered if the computer had frozen. She was leaning forward to smack it when suddenly JINN was replaced with a two-dimensional photo of a beautiful young woman, with light blond hair and blue eyes…though the beauty was tarnished slightly by the Soviet uniform she wore. "Beginning query," JINN intoned. "Captain Oscar Ozpin, United States Navy, and Natasha Kukharchuk, KGB."

* * *

_Office of Naval Intelligence Headquarters, Old Executive Building_

_Washington, District of Columbia, United States of America_

_14 Februrary 1959_

"Lieutenant Oscar Ozpin reporting for duty, sir." Ozpin snapped to attention.

"Good morning, Lieutenant. Have a seat." Rear Admiral Eric Moran motioned to one of the high-backed chairs around the heavy, long oak table. "This is Commander Richard Winkle, who runs our Soviet Navy bureau," Moran said, nodding towards the third Navy man, who like Moran and Ozpin, were wearing the dress blue winter uniform; Washington was typically dreary and snowy this Valentine's Day. "This is Lisa Uragano, with the Central Intelligence Agency." Ozpin nodded to the young brunette, who cooly returned it. "And I'm sure you recognize Miss Uragano's boss, Director Allen Dulles." Ozpin swallowed nervously and shook the hand of the gray-haired, mustachioed man. Moran signaled the Marine at the door, who switched off the lights, left the room, and locked the door.

"Now how long have you been with ONI, Lieutenant?" Moran asked.

"A year, sir. Graduated from Annapolis, class of '58," Ozpin answered.

"You were interested in transferring to flight training? May I ask why?"

Ozpin fought down a wave of nervousness. "Permission to speak freely, sir?" Moran nodded. "I'm bored. I've been cracking Soviet naval dispatches for a year, and, to be honest, the fun ended six months ago. I didn't join the Navy to sit in an office. I'd like to go to sea—and I've always enjoyed flying."

"Mm. You're already a qualified pilot." Moran grinned. "Well, Ozpin, the Navy isn't run at the behest of Lieutenants, much less junior grade ones, but I think I can make you a deal. I'm going to give you a two-year assignment. After the successful conclusion of that, I'll make sure you get a slot at Pensacola in late '62. How's that sound?"

Ozpin hesitated. Since Moran hadn't mentioned where the assignment was, he was probably going to some godawful place like Shemya, Alaska or Coco Solo, Panama. Or worse. Still, it was a chance at wings of gold. "I think you got a deal, sir." Ozpin smiled.

Moran laughed. "All right. Commander, let's have it."

Winkle reached out and switched on a projector. It took a minute to warm up, then it showed a color picture of a woman. Ozpin resisted the urge to let out a low whistle. The woman was quite beautiful, with light blonde hair and piercing blue eyes. She was wearing a Soviet military uniform, but the collar tabs were dark blue; she was _Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti,_ Committee for State Security—better known as the KGB. "This is Senior Lieutenant Natasha Kukharchuk," Winkle explained. "Do you recognize the surname, Lieutenant?"

Ozpin recognized that as a test. "Yes, sir. Isn't that the maiden name of Premier Khrushchev's wife?"

"It is. She's Khrushchev's niece by marriage—hence the fact that she's a Senior Lieutenant with highly secret clearance at the age of 25." Winkle chuckled. "Despite the Soviet Union's claim of equality for all, nepotism never changes, no matter what governmental model." Moran politely coughed and Winkle hurriedly moved on; Allen Dulles' brother, John Foster Dulles, was the Secretary of State for the current Eisenhower administration. "She was educated at Moscow University, and joined the KGB immediately after graduation. Her major was physics—specifically, nuclear physics. She graduated near the top of her class, so her rank isn't entirely due to being related to the top man in the USSR. Her current job is working in the KGB's liasion to Strategic Rocket Forces—the Soviets' ICBM and MRBM forces, as you know." He sat back down. "Miss Uragano, if you could…"

She stood up and walked over to the projection screen; Ozpin noticed that the woman was only five feet tall, and young herself. "Lieutenant, my job at CIA is keeping tabs on people like Kukharchuk. The reason why you're here and being introduced to her is that Lieutenant Kukharchuk is considering defection."

"Holy shit—er, sorry, sir," Ozpin quickly apologized. Everyone around the table laughed, except for Uragano, whose expression did not change. "You see why she's suddenly on our radar," she said to Ozpin.

"I do, miss," Ozpin replied. "Lieutenant Kukharchuk would have access to Soviet missile technology. Plus her relationship with Premier Khrushchev would be an embarrassment to him personally if she were to defect. It would give us a huge leg up in the Cold War."

"And that's where you come in, Lieutenant," Dulles said, tamping down tobacco in his pipe. "We want you to make contact with Kukharchuk."

"Me, sir? Why?" Ozpin asked.

"Quite simple, son. You speak Russian fluently, for one thing—don't worry, Kukharchuk speaks English fluently as well. You'll be assigned to the naval attache's office in Moscow, where meetings between you two will be arranged by Miss Uragano. The KGB will be watching, of course, but we're planning on that. You see, Lieutenant Kukharchuk's cover will be that she's trying to turn _you,_ to obtain secrets on how good our cryptography is. We'll give you enough not to compromise us, but enough to make the Russians _think_ they're compromising us. Then, when the time is right, when your friendship is established, she'll walk into the American embassy, for a dinner date, perhaps—and then ask for asylum."

"We expect you to take it slow," Moran explained. "That's why it's a two-year assignment. We're going to put the KGB to sleep, make them think Kukharchuk is working you. Might even leak that _you_ want to defect at some point. Then boom, she's suddenly working for us." Moran grinned. "Not to mention the fact that she's rather pretty." Ozpin got Moran's drift: neither ONI nor the CIA would mind overmuch if he seduced Kukharchuk. Looking at her picture, Ozpin found himself rather looking forward to the attempt. "Now, we're going to put this on a volunteer basis, Lieutenant. You didn't enlist in the Navy to fly a desk, but you didn't enlist to be a spy, either."

Ozpin had already made his decision. He'd always wanted to visit Moscow, and two years in the enemy's capitol, making the acquaintance of a rather beautiful woman—plenty of which could look back on Ozpin and smile in and around Annapolis—and then sliding into his slot at Pensacola. He could see himself flying the new F8U Crusader through the clouds already. "Admiral, sir…when do I leave?"

Moran clapped him on the shoulder. "Attaboy. You'll leave in two weeks."

Dulles brought his pipe to life. "Lieutenant, I don't have to tell you how secret this all is. Our way of life may depend on it."

"No, sir," Ozpin answered.

"One last thing," Dulles told him. "Naturally, we can't refer to Kukharchuk by her name in correspondence, so we've assigned her a codename." He puffed on his pipe. "She's codenamed Salem. Can you remember that, Lieutenant?"

* * *

_Metropol Hotel_

_Moscow, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics_

_2 May 1962_

"It's such a pretty word," Natasha Kukharchuk said, letting the water stream down her hair. "Salem. I rather like it."

Ozpin carefully shampooed her blonde locks. "I'm not sure I ever told you the background behind it."

"Isn't it like the witch trials back in Massachusetts in the 17th Century?" She smiled over her shoulder at him. Ozpin laughed and nodded. "Another example of how religion is the opiate of the masses."

"Oh, I don't know," Ozpin told her, kissing her shoulder. "You've certainly put a spell on me."

She turned towards him, pressing her breasts against his chest. "And what are you, Oscar Ozpin, but a wizard?"

He bent down and kissed her. "Is that my codename? Baba Yaga?"

Kukharchuk laughed; she had a high, trilling laugh that he found very sexy. Of course, everything was sexy about her. "No, silly. I've told you—your codename is Baum, for the man who wrote _The Wizard of Oz._ Appropriate, yes?"

"I guess. Wizard would've been better." She kissed his chest. "Natasha…while we're here…" Once they had become lovers, they always discussed secret matters in the shower. Besides being rather fun, the steam tended to defeat and corrode any KGB listening devices that might be in the bathroom. Undoubtedly the entire hotel room had them, but Ozpin's leaks of information to Kukharchuk always took place in the bedroom for that reason. The KGB was satisfied she was being the perfect honey trap—the term for a female spy seducing a target—never knowing that it was just the opposite…though some days Ozpin wasn't quite sure himself.

She sighed and leaned against him. "Yes, of course. Business before pleasure." She shook her head. "I don't really want to tell you. It's bad news."

"What?" Ozpin didn't like the tone in her voice.

"I'm leaving Moscow. They're assigning me to Cuba." She quickly put her hands on his face. "Oscar, my love, it's only temporary. For about six months, perhaps less. Then I'll be back here in Moscow, I swear." She stood on tiptoe, whispering in his ear, her words barely audible. "Then we put the plan in motion." Ozpin hugged her close; the plan was her defection. She would be spirited out of the Soviet Union, given an assumed name, and go into hiding. Not that it mattered, because Ozpin had already planned on marrying her. Even if it meant giving up his naval career, he wanted nothing more than the woman in his arms.

"Why?" he said quietly, into _her_ ear.

"I don't know. But given my expertise…" She dropped down to her feet and raised an eyebrow.

"Shit," Ozpin said. Kukharchuk's expertise was nuclear weapons. If she was being sent to Cuba, where there were no nuclear weapons, it could only mean Khrushchev intended to deploy them. "You know how destabilizing that could be. It could mean war."

"I know. But I know my uncle…I think he's only…what is the term? Saber rattling." She shrugged. "He believes Kennedy is weak. He thinks the United States will just accept the missiles—after all, Kennedy has deployed similar weapons to Turkey."

"He doesn't know Jack Kennedy," Ozpin murmured, using President John F. Kennedy's nickname. "Okay, I'll get it in the pipeline."

"It could be nothing," Kukharchuk replied. "A fact-finding mission." She stuck out her tongue. "Ugh. Sticky humidity. I'm a Moscow girl at heart."

"You were born in the Ukraine."

"Bah! Details!" Kukharchuk grabbed a double handful of Ozpin's buttocks; he gave a surprised squeak. "Enough shop talk. Take me to bed, you wizard."

"You got it…Salem." He kissed her nose and she laughed.

* * *

_Naval Base Guantanamo Bay_

_Guantanamo Bay, Cuba_

_28 October 1962_

"Lieutenant, with all due respect…this is the craziest thing I've ever heard of," the Marine sergeant said. "We're damn near at war, and you're meeting with a Russian spy?"

"Sarge, if I don't meet with her, we might just _be_ at war."

" _Her?"_

Ozpin didn't answer. The two of them were waiting at a point east of the naval base itself, near the Cuban town of Boqueron, the only part of the base where the distance between the two concertina-topped walls was less than a mile. A disused road ran between the two; minefields were on both sides of the road, set by both Cuban and American forces. Behind him and the Marine was a platoon of Marines, in full battle gear, M14s at the ready. In the twilight, across no man's land, Ozpin could see a similar platoon of Cuban troops, with AK-47s. He wondered if they were as nervous and scared as he was.

Finally a gate opened in the Cuban wall, and a Russian jeep drove out, with both a Soviet and a white flag of truce flapping from its fenders. His heart leapt as he made out Natasha Kukharchuk in the backseat. The jeep came on slowly, the driver careful to negotiate the potholed road. Finally, they came to a stop a hundred feet from the Marines, and the driver helped Kukharchuk out of the back. Ozpin heard a sharp intake of breath from the sergeant behind him, but said nothing. Instead, he walked out fifty paces to meet her.

"God, you're beautiful," he blurted.

Kukharchuk stifled her laugh. "I'm huge." She was wearing the olive drab uniform with KGB rank tabs, just like in the picture he'd first seen her in. She wasn't six months pregnant in the picture, though. "I've been craving borscht. I _hate_ borscht."

He wished he could embrace her, but there were too many people around, and too many questions that would be asked. "What have you told the KGB?"

"The truth, for once. You got me pregnant. They'll allow me to keep the baby, but I have to give it up for adoption after I have her. Of course, there is our little plan…"

" _Her?"_ Ozpin couldn't keep the huge smile off his face. They'd only managed to get three letters to each other in the six months they'd been apart.

"Oscar, please. We have other things we must speak of." She held out a hand. "The communication from your President to Prime Minister Castro." He handed her the sealed letter, then a manila package. Kukharchuk looked mystified. "What's this? Additional instructions?"

"A warning," Ozpin said. "To the battery commander at San Cristobal—and you, personally." He raised his hands to take hers, remembered, and dropped them. "Natasha, listen to me. I'm committing treason, but we can't let this get out of hand. You know about the U-2 shootdown earlier today?"

"Yes," she nodded quickly. "It was the Cubans. Please tell the President that. Will you see him?"

"Of course. I'm heading back to Washington within the hour. I was able to convince President Kennedy that you and I were a good back-channel contact."

"Good. It was the Cubans," she repeated. "Fidel's brother Raul ordered the shootdown. Not any of us." She felt the weight of the envelope. "What is it?"

"Invasion plans for Cuba. The President's serious, Natasha. The loss of the U-2 forced his hand. The blockade's been working, he's talking to Khrushchev, but we're in real trouble now. Khrushchev wants our missiles out of Turkey in exchange for yours here, but Kennedy's not crazy about that deal. He wants to go with the original deal—withdraw the missiles in exchange for a noninvasion pledge."

"My uncle is under tremendous pressure," Kukharchuk said. "The hardliners want war. Castro wants war, even if it means the death of everyone in Cuba."

"Which is why I'm giving you that. You have to tell the battery commander not to launch, no matter what. If he does, we're all dead. Those missiles will reach Washington in less than ten minutes—and that's where I'll be, Natasha."

She went pale—paler than usual. "Dear God. When? How long do we have?"

"The President is considering a massive airstrike tomorrow. The 30th at the latest. But he's working on other back-channel contacts with Khrushchev to descalate. Both sides want to, but we've got to give them time." Then Ozpin thought _to hell with it_ and grabbed her hands, then kissed her. "Please, Natasha. Tell him. Tell him he can't launch, or Kennedy _will_ attack, with everything we've got."

"I will. I promise." She touched his face. "It will be all right, Oscar. I love you."

"I love you…" He grinned at her. "Salem."

She smiled. "I will be in Moscow by the end of next month. Our child will be born there, and she will be beautiful." She waved to him, then turned and walked briskly back to the jeep, drying her tears. Ozpin watched her go, then returned to the Marines. The sergeant was gaping at him. "Sir? Who the hell was that, sir?"

"You never saw any of that, Marine," Ozpin commanded. "None of it."

"Yes, sir. Didn't see a thing, sir." He blew out his breath. "You think we're going to live through this?"

"We'd damn well better, Sarge."

* * *

_Gran Club Santa Lucia_

_Havana, Cuba_

_29 October 1962_

"No, Uncle!" Natasha Kukharchuk shouted in the phone. "I warned him that it was a warning _not_ to fire, but he said he had to fire before the Americans destroyed his rockets, like the Fascists wiped out our air force at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War! I left to come here to talk to Castro, but he fired thirty minutes after I left!" Her fingers were trembling as she listened. "Ten minutes. That's all, Uncle. Washington's been hit by now." She couldn't hold back a sob. The world was ending. She rubbed her swollen belly. Her child would not have a father, but neither would any other child. "I don't know. Vice-President Johnson is in Tex—"

Without warning, an earsplitting screech burst from the phone. Salem dropped the phone in horror. Her assistant, a Red Army sergeant, looked at her, eyes wide in fear. "Mother of God! What _is_ that?"

Tears ran down her face. "The phone melting. On the other side of the line." In a trance, she hung up the screaming phone. "Moscow's gone. The Americans hit it. Khrushchev is dead. My aunt is dead. Everyone is dead."

"Oh God." The sergeant was from Leningrad. He shook off the horror and grabbed her hand. "We've got to get out of here, Comrade Lieutenant. There's airplanes at San Julian; we might could get back to the Motherland, if there's anything—"

The room was suddenly filled with bright light; luckily, none of them were facing the windows. The sergeant grabbed her and pushed her into the bathroom. "Get in the tub! Keep your head down!" As she half-fell, half-dropped into the tub, he threw himself behind the toilet.

A second later, the world exploded as the shockwave hit the Gran Club Santa Lucia. The hotel was six miles from the epicenter of the detonation of the one megaton warhead, which had been atop an American Atlas ICBM, in the central business district of Havana. The shockwave was entirely silent, and the hotel collapsed under it, the forward walls blowing inwards, every window exploding. On the heels of the shockwave was the heat pulse: everything remotely flammable burst into flames.

The sergeant had saved their lives. The bathroom was centrally located and well built, so it survived the shockwave, while the overbuilt concrete walls shielded them from the heat pulse; burst water pipes acted as a sprinkler system, soaking them in water, protecting them from the intense heat that still would've caused their clothes to catch fire. Kukharchuk kept her eyes closed, praying—the USSR might be atheist, but there were no atheists in a nuclear war. She waited five minutes, and suddenly it was over. She felt warmth on her skin, and opened her eyes. She looked into a blue sky; the ceiling was gone. It didn't stay blue for long: the leading edges of the immense mushroom cloud were beginning to blot out the sun. "Sergeant?" She cleared her throat, popped her ears. "Sergeant?"

The sergeant slowly got up. He was covered in tile dust, but he was breathing. He checked himself, amazed to still be alive. "My God. Are you all right, Comrade Lieutenant?" They could hear screaming from the rest of the hotel.

"Yes. Let's get out of here." She managed to get to her feet. "You're right. We have to get to San Julian, if it's still there."

They made their way through the rubble, which wasn't as hard as it seemed: the hotel had mostly vanished, and they walked out into the street, which was amazingly clear of debris. Most of the palm trees were blown over; the others were on fire. Their jeep was wrapped around one of the burning trees. Other than the screams and the crackles of flame, it was eerily quiet.

" _Ayudame,_ " someone was begging. "Help me." Kukharchuk turned and saw someone else stagger out of the ruined hotel. It was one of the maids, a pretty girl of sixteen. She was not pretty any longer: her entire body was covered in protruding shards of glass, driven into her skin at supersonic speeds. Her clothes were gone. "Help me," she said, and stumbled towards them, leaving bloody footprints in her wake.

Kukharchuk reached back and grabbed the sergeant's service revolver. She raised it, aimed, and shot the girl in the head. Her butchered body fell to the ground. "Let's go. There has to be a car somewhere." The sergeant managed to hold back his vomit, and nodded. As they walked down the street, Kukharchuk suddenly felt her stomach heave as well, but knew in horror that it wasn't nausea. _Not now, baby,_ she thought. _You can't come now. Not into this hell._

As they walked, a black rain began to fall.

* * *

_Longyearbyen_

_Svalbard, Kingdom of Norway_

_28 May 1977_

Oscar Ozpin waited at the end of the runway, his heavy peacoat fluttering in the Arctic wind. It was after midnight, but the sun still shone. He turned at the sound of someone approaching. "Summer. You shouldn't be here."

Summer Rose smiled up at him. She wore a USAF-issue parka over her flight suit, her reddish hair hidden in a thick fur hood. In her hands was a steaming cup of coffee. "Thought you might need to warm up, sir." He couldn't argue with that logic, so he took the cup and drank it. The warmth flooded through him. "We'll be leaving here in a bit, sir. Just as soon as the crew finishes loading the Night Raven into the C-141." She snorted. "Night Raven. Kind of a dumb codename." Then she laughed. "You just _know_ Raven's going to want to fly it, as soon as we get it assembled. She'll say that it's literally got her name on it."

"Not as pregnant as she is," Ozpin replied.

Summer thumped her hands together to get them warm, even under the gloves. "Think we've finally given the GRIMM the slip?" She puffed out a cloud of breath. "Damn, sir. I've never seen so many of them. I still don't know how we made it. If Ironwood and Goodwitch hadn't—"

Ozpin suddenly stiffened. "Summer," he said, in an odd tone of voice. "Leave. Now."

She looked at him, her silver eyes wide. Her hand crept towards the pistol in its shoulder holster. "Sir?"

"That's an order, Captain. Now." Seeing the concern and fear in her eyes, he nodded. "I'll be all right. Just go." Reluctantly, Summer began to back away, unholstering the pistol.

It seemed to take forever for her to reach him, but Ozpin had noticed the slim figure walking towards him over the permafrost at the end of the runway, and somehow knew instantly who it was. He recognized the walk. He glanced behind: Summer had fallen back about a hundred paces. He waved her pistol down, then walked forward himself to meet the woman he'd loved—he still loved—on the short grass.

"Ozpin," she said.

"Natasha," he replied in amazement. "I thought it might…but…"

Red eyes gazed back at him, red in sclera of darkness. "No longer. I am Salem. That name is so appropriate now." She raised a hand from under her heavy, black cloak, and drew back the hood. Ozpin nearly fell in shock. Her features were still beautiful, in some ways, but in other ways she was hideous. "Your skin…your hair…"

Natasha Kukharchuk—Salem—smiled back at him. "Oh yes. Odd, isn't it? I absorbed enough radiation to kill a human being, but for some reason, it didn't kill me. Only bleached my skin, grayed my hair, and changed the color of my eyes. The doctors in Russia—the ones that survived—said it was a miracle of God." She laughed humorlessly. "I rather think it was not God."

"Natasha—"

"Salem!" she shouted angrily. "That is who I am now, Ozpin. That is what _you_ have made me."

"I didn't…" He took a step forward, only to be stopped by those pitiless eyes. "When I gave you those plans…I didn't think the Soviets would…"

Her expression softened, and suddenly she could not meet his eyes. "Neither did I. It was…a mistake. But one that killed eighty million people. You did that. _We_ did that."

"I'd heard you survived…from intelligence we managed to get when some of our spies made it back. I tried to find out more, but then…" His voice trailed off.

"You learned that I was the one controlling the GRIMM." She nodded. "Yes, Ozpin, that is me. I recovered what was left of Mother Russia, and I turned it all into one giant factory to build monsters. I am Czarina, queen, of the ashes."

"But why?" Ozpin asked. "Natasha, I would've rescued you. I would've brought you home."

"But you didn't," she countered. "I thought you were dead, Ozpin. Then I learned of you a few years ago. You were leading the fight against me."

"I didn't know."

"It doesn't matter. What I saw, in that hell I lived in for five years, cannot be described."

Ozpin swallowed. The question had to be asked. "What about our child?"

"Dead," she said flatly. "I miscarried on the flight back to Russia. The last flight out of Cuba. Sitting there, among two hundred strangers, giving birth to a corpse." He saw tears well up in her eyes, which she angrily wiped away. "We killed our child, Ozpin. We killed her. And there will never be another. I am barren now."

He tried to take her hands, but she slapped them away. "Natasha, please. I don't understand. Why are you so…enraged?" Ozpin tried to touch her again, but she only stepped back.

"I'm not, Ozpin. I am insane." She smiled, and he half believed it. "Do you think _anyone_ could live what I lived through without going mad?"

"It wasn't easy for us, either," Ozpin said.

"At least a remnant of the United States survived. Nothing was left of the Motherland. Nothing. Everyone I knew, loved, before I met you—even you, I thought—gone. The land melted in Moscow, Ozpin. The land melted."

"It did in the United States, too."

"No. Not like it did for us. But it doesn't matter. I'm not here to restart the Cold War."

Ozpin put his hands behind his back. "Then what are you here for, Natasha?"

"Salem," she snapped again. "What am I here for? To see you, one last time. I knew it was you that stole the project. I sent my GRIMM after you—I rather like that name, by the way—and you, as you always do, survived. So I came on, alone." She motioned with her head behind her. "Beyond those hills are more, so don't get any ideas. I hold them back now, but if you try to take me, none of us will live."

"It doesn't have to be that way. The Cold War's over."

She laughed once more. "True! But this isn't about fighting one last battle between Marxism-Leninism and capitalism, Ozpin. This is about the end of the world." She motioned around them. "We only delayed the inevitable. I intend to finish it. Humanity—and I include the Faunus abominations—does not deserve to survive."

"How can you think that?" Ozpin exclaimed. "My God, Natasha. We've rebuilt. We've survived."

"Our child didn't. I saw things no one should ever see, Ozpin. I killed a woman rather than watch her die from being impaled on hundreds of glass shards—"

"I saw all that too."

"It doesn't matter!" she shrilled. "We melted _children!_ _Our_ children!" Her lips curled back in a snarl. "I intend to watch the world burn, Ozpin. All of it. Bring it all crashing down. Build a bonfire so high that God Himself will see it. Then, perhaps, He'll return and save what is left. But I doubt it. God abandoned this world just like we did. We're only delaying the inevitable death, Ozpin. Even if I disappeared tomorrow, even if all the GRIMM were destroyed, humans would destroy themselves within a decade. Especially now that you've given them the means to do so, again."

"The Maidens," he said. "I guessed you might know about them."

"They will not stop me, Ozpin. You will not stop me." To his surprise, it was she who reached out and touched his face. Her fingers were deathly cold. "We are iredeemable. If there is a hell, Ozpin, I will find you there. Perhaps we can be together in the flames. But not here. Never here. Never again."

"I loved you," he told her. "I still do."

"I loved you," she returned. "But no longer."

Ozpin nodded. "Then Natasha Kukharchuk is truly dead." He stepped back. "Goodbye, Salem." Then he turned his back on her and walked away.

* * *

_Almaty International Airport Hotel_

_Almaty, Republic of Kazakhstan_

_25 July 2001_

"The story is complete," JINN said with finality.

The room's stunned silence was broken by Ruby. "Oh my God. _That's_ what Ozpin was hiding. He started the war."

"Do you have any other inquiries?" JINN asked, unfazed by the armageddon she had just shared.

No one answered for a full minute, until Oscar spoke up. "JINN. Who am I?"


	9. Storm On the Horizon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Ruby Flight recovers from the shock of what JINN has told them, they have another challenge waiting. 
> 
> The flight to Iran will not be routine...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After that really long chapter last time, something a bit shorter, and a bridge chapter to the next story arc.
> 
> Getting Ruby Flight separated from Norn Flight (or at least most of Norn) may seem a little contrived, for which I apologize. The part about the headwinds/tailwinds is accurate (I think); a similar situation hit the five bomb groups going to Ploesti in 1943, causing the formation to get badly separated over the Bulgarian mountains. For those of you who are from Wisconsin or know the area, this chapter confirms what you've probably figured out: JRB Beacon was the real-life Volk Field in central Wisconsin, north of the Dells.

_Almaty International Airport Hotel_

_Almaty, Republic of Kazakhstan_

_25 July 2001_

"He fucking _lied_ to us!" Yang shouted.

"Quiet!" Qrow snapped. He pointed with his flask to JINN, who was answering Oscar's question.

"You are Ensign Oscar Pine of the United States Navy," JINN said. Before Oscar could yell that she was stating the obvious—if a hologram had a gender—she continued. "Captain Oscar Ozpin programmed me to tell you that you are his son, as a result of a relationship with Veronica Pine of Pilger, Nebraska."

"I know that!" Oscar exclaimed. "What happened?"

"Captain Ozpin and Veronica Pine met at Beacon in 1977, not long after his return from Norway. She was serving as a civilian Department of Defense employee at Joint Base Beacon—though it was known as Naval Air Station Beacon-Volk at the time. They began a relationship, but Captain Ozpin ended the relationship two months before you were born, in 1978. He provided for your upbringing and arranged for your training slot at Pensacola when you made the decision to become a naval aviator."

Oscar came off the bed, fists raised. Ruby realized he was going to smash the console and was able to grab him before he could, barely stopping the enraged ensign. "You mean that was _him?_ " Oscar shouted. "I didn't earn that on my own? It was _arranged?"_

Blake reached out a hand. "Oscar, Ozpin may have arranged for you to get to flight training, but there's no way he arranged for you to pass! You did all that on your own!"

"How can we know? He arranged everything else!"

Blake shook her head. "Oscar, he wasn't with you when you soloed the first time, was he? Or when you carqualled?" The Air Force pilots in the room looked at her. "Carried qualified," she explained. "That was all on you, Oscar."

Oscar calmed down a little. "My whole life is a lie," he said quietly.

If a hologram could look sad, JINN did, though Ruby supposed that she could've been programmed to look like that. "Captain Ozpin instructed me to tell you that he loved your mother very much, and left her because he knew he could not be there for either of you, due to the war. Moreover, he was also afraid you would become a target for Salem if they married. Salem's jealousy and insanity over losing her own child would have caused her to stop at nothing to kill you both." JINN's expression returned to her usual smile. "Are there any other queries at this time?"

"Yeah, just a few," Yang snarled. "Who is Rissa Arashikaze?"

JINN was silent for a moment. "I do not have that information," she replied, looking apologetic.

"It's been erased?"

"No, Captain Xiao Long. It was never placed in my databanks to begin with."

"Fine. It's not a big deal anyway." Yang angrily folded her arms across her breasts. "Last one, JINN. What was Ozpin's plan for defeating Salem?"

Another hesitation. "He never had one. At least, not one he shared with me." The smile came back once more. "Are there any other queries at this time?"

"No, JINN. Thank you," Weiss said. Oscar was seething and Yang looked ready to murder someone. JINN bowed, pressing her hands together, then derezzed. The console shut itself off.

"How much did you know?" Yang demanded of Qrow.

Qrow gave her a dirty look. "Watch your tone, Yang. I'm still your uncle, _and_ your superior officer." He took a drink from the flask. "I knew about the part in Norway; I was there. I didn't know about Cuba. I suspected, most of us did, that he was involved somehow, but not like that."

Yang was shaking her head. "I just can't wrap my mind around this. I thought Ozpin was a good old stick. Instead he's the biggest damn mass murderer in history."

"That's a bit harsh, Yang," Weiss told her. "He didn't know that the Russian battery commander would launch. That was insane."

"What was insane was giving the invasion plans to Salem!" Yang growled. "God, what was he _thinking?"_

"The things we do for love," Blake said quietly.

"Yeah? And millions of people got turned into grease spots! Those people are _dead_ , Blake!"

Blake jumped to her feet, her ears flattening against her head. "Yang, that's enough! You've never been in love! You don't know what you'll do to keep that person by your side!" She turned red and looked away. "You don't know," she repeated in a lower voice.

Yang stared at her, then at Qrow. "What are we going to do about this?"

Qrow slowly got to his feet. "What am I supposed to do, Yang? Punch Oscar? It's not his fault."

"Wasn't saying it was. He got fucked more than any of us."

"I'm pissed too, Yang. But all those millions of people are still dead. Ozpin's dead. What difference does it make now?" He took another drink, put the flask in a pocket, and headed for the door. "I'm going to make sure Maria's not passed out in the bar, and then I'm going to bed. You should do the same." He pointed at them. "And don't tell _anyone_ about what we learned tonight. We better pray that Salem really can't track JINN or Arashikaze doesn't find out, otherwise we're going to be shoveling shit at Leavenworth for the rest of our lives. If we're lucky—remember, Arashikaze's had people killed for less. So zip it." He left, slamming the door behind him.

Yang tapped her foot angrily, clearly wanting to punch something. "Why are you so upset?" Weiss wanted to know.

"Because Ozpin and Arashikaze never told us any of it. Hell, he never even told Uncle Qrow or Mom, probably. We've been bleeding for a guy who started the worst war in human history, and for what?" She held up her arm. "I lost my arm for this? This is bullshit."

"We never asked," Blake replied. "And we've bled for the world, Yang. Otherwise Salem would've killed a lot more by now."

"Yeah? Well, next time we're back home in Patch, Blake, I'll show you my mom's grave. Seems to me that Salem's doing a pretty damn good job at killing."

"Yang," Ruby said, quietly but firmly. "C'mon. Let's not do this."

"You're thinking with your heart rather than your head," Blake put in, which was a mistake. Yang swung around on her, the artificial fingers involuntarily curling into a fist. Her other fingers started to shake. She slowly breathed out, then headed for the door as well. "Fucking bullshit," she snapped, and left.

Blake sighed. "Great. We're back to square one, now. I thought she'd forgiven me."

Ruby scooted over and put a hand on the Faunus' shoulder. "It's okay. Yang's always been like that. She blows her top and yells and screams, but she's okay by the next morning. She doesn't hate you, Blake."

"I guess." Blake got up. "I suppose I should get to sleep."

"Me too," Weiss agreed. "Good night, all."

Ruby waved at them and got to her feet. Once they were alone, she looked down at Oscar. "I know you're not okay."

"I was a mistake, Ruby," Oscar said, his voice breaking. "An afterthought. Ozpin just left me and Mom."

"You heard what JINN said," Ruby told him. "Salem would've gone after you."

"She's not omnipotent, Ruby. He could've kept it a secret. Instead, he did all that…because he felt guilty about what happened. That he knocked Mom up. As a rebound because his _real_ lover went dark side on him!" Oscar slammed a fist into the nightstand. "Dammit!" Then he put his head in his hands. "Dammit…Yang's right. Ozpin was a bastard."

Ruby sat down again, and put an arm around him. "I think he loved your mom, Oscar. And you. But he was afraid the same thing would happen to you that happened to his kid with Salem. That's got to work on a guy—you spend 12 or 15 years fighting something, then find out you were fighting basically your fiancee? And that she hates your guts and wants to wipe out humanity because she's batshit? And that your daughter died the moment she came into the world?" Ruby blew out a breath. "That would mess anybody up."

Oscar slowly nodded. "I guess." He looked up at the JINN console, and gave her a wan smile. "You know, I may end up dead or in jail, but I'm glad I did that. I'm glad I know. Even if it hurts like hell."

Ruby smiled back. "Well, I don't think Arashikaze's as much as a bitch as she wants everyone to think. I don't think she's going to kill us all or something." She took his hands. "Still…lot to take in."

"Yeah."

"Do you….want me to stay here tonight? With you?" She blushed. "I mean, you know…for companionship or something..."

Oscar was tempted, but he wondered if Ruby was making the offer out of friendship or pity. Either way, that was not how he wanted to start a relationship with Ruby Rose. He also thought of his mother, wondering if she'd slept with Ozpin out of pity for a broken man. _I was a mistake,_ he thought again. "No…thanks, Ruby. Not tonight. I think I just…need to think."

"Sure." Ruby leaned forward and kissed his cheek. "You're a good guy, Oscar." She stood and only slowly let go of his hand. "Keep the faith." Then she left, leaving Oscar alone with his thoughts.

* * *

_Almaty International Airport_

_Almaty, Republic of Kazakhstan_

_26 July 2001_

Ruby checked her watch. "Where the heck _is_ he?" They were all standing around their aircraft, but the only one who wasn't present was Qrow.

"I can go check on him," Blake offered. She rubbed her arms. The flight suit wasn't much protection against a storm, and the leading edges of it were coming over the horizon, with a cold wind in front of it.

"I'll do it," Yang said. "Just hope he didn't get drunk and pass out and drown in his own vomit or something."

"God, Yang!" Ruby's eyes were wide.

Yang shrugged. "It could happen. You remember all the times he staggered into our house hammered?"

Ruby laughed. "I remember I thought he was a zombie one night and clocked him in the nuts with a whiffleball bat." She spread her arms at Blake's and Weiss' expression. "What? I was like six years old!"

Yang didn't even smile. "I'll go get him." She walked briskly towards the terminal.

Maria Calavera was leaning on the ladder. "Who pissed in her cornflakes this morning?"

"Aunt Flo is in town," Ruby said, before Maria could ask any other questions they weren't going to answer. She saw Pyrrha walking up to her, shivering so hard that her teeth were chattering. Greece didn't exactly have weather like this, and Pyrrha hadn't been at Beacon long enough to acclimate. "I can't believe it's going to _snow_ around here. It's the end of July."

Maria shrugged. "I damn near died in a whiteout in Iceland…in August."

"Yes, well…" Pyrrha showed her watch to Ruby. "We need to take off soon. It's four hours to Tehran, and we're supposed to pick up the tanker near the Turkmenistan border. We're already thirty minutes behind schedule."

"I don't think any of us got much sleep last night."

"I slept freaking awesome!" Nora shouted, and put a proprietary arm around Ren, who actually turned red.

"I actually slept pretty well myself," Pyrrha added. "Thought I heard some yelling around midnight, but I dropped right back into sleep."

"Glad someone did." Ruby sighed. "Pyrrha, go ahead and take off. We'll catch up." She pulled a map out of her kneepad and opened it, trying to keep it from flying out of her hands. "We'll rendezvous about here—northwest of Samarkand." She took a red pencil out of a pocket and marked it. Pyrrha memorized the coordinates and nodded. "Okay." Pyrrha smiled. "See you in Tehran."

"Hopefully it's still there," Blake said, waving. Pyrrha waved back, and headed for her F-22. Ruby watched her go, then looked over to where Oscar was putting on his helmet. She waved, and he smiled and waved back. He seemed better this morning, anyway.

Norn Flight was taxiing out when Yang and Qrow finally returned. Qrow looked worse than usual, his eyes sunken pits, bent over more than the norm. Ruby met them. "Holy crap, Uncle! You look like hell."

"Yeah. Didn't sleep worth a shit." She smelled alcohol on his breath, but that wasn't unusual.

"Can you fly?"

Qrow chuckled. "Oh hell yeah. Let me get a shot of oxygen and I'm good to go. Hell, I've flown so drunk that I didn't even remember the mission." At Ruby's look, he held up a finger. "I'm _not_ drunk, Ruby. Just tired."

"Okay, Uncle Qrow. We got to get going!" She had to yell as Pyrrha and Oscar took off, their afterburners shaking the airport. He threw her a thumbs-up and started walking towards the F-117. She glanced at Yang. "If I didn't know better," she told her sister, "I'd say he got _really_ drunk last night. Even for him."

"Can you blame him? I was tempted to get into the booze too, Ruby."

Ruby put a hand on her sister's shoulder. "Yang…are _you_ okay?"

Yang smiled and kissed her sister's forehead. "Yeah. Let's just fly, okay? Get on up there and it'll put everything into perspective."

"You bet!" Ruby gave her a quick hug and half-skipped towards her F-16 as Ren and Nora took off. "Today's going to be a good day!"

* * *

_Near Navoi, Kazakhstan_

_26 July 2001_

"Fucking bullshit," Ruby groaned. "I don't _believe_ this."

"It happens," Maria said from the backseat. "Winds are always weird over the mountains. There was this one time, over the Sierra Nevadas—"

"Oh, shut up," Ruby snapped. She liked Maria's stories, but she was feeling about as irritable as Yang. She glanced at her navigation display, then crosschecked it with her map.

"That's no way to talk to a defenseless old lady," Maria replied. Ruby didn't answer. She pulled up her visor and rubbed her eyes.

Ruby Flight wasn't lost, but what had been a half hour between takeoff times for Norn and Ruby Flights had turned into nearly two hours. It was a combination of the oncoming storm, which stretched from Afghanistan well into former Russia, updrafts over the mountains below, and just plain bad luck. Norn Flight had run into a tailwind, which put them well ahead of Ruby Flight, whereas Ruby had run into a headwind. To put the cherry on the bad luck sundae, they were in an area of spotty communications, where the United States and NATO's communication satellites did not cover. Ruby keyed her mike again. "Norn Lead, Ruby Lead, come in." She'd already sent that message four times, with no response. The fifth time was no different.

Ruby checked her flight. Weiss was bouncing up and down a little in the turbulence, but still holding station to her right and behind; Yang and Blake were to her left, right where they were supposed to be. Qrow was trailing behind them, barely in visual range, the trailer in case GRIMM jumped Ruby Flight. Next she checked her fuel. The headwind had changed that, as well. Ruby did some mental calculations. They might could still keep the tanker rendezvous, but it would be tight.

With another muttered curse, Ruby punched the mike button again. "Norn Lead, Ruby Lead, come in."

There was another few seconds of silence, then Oscar's voice sounded in her headphones. "Ruby Lead, Norn Two, reading you five-by."

"Oh, thank God," Ruby said, then replied to Oscar. "Norn Two, what's your location?" Oscar read off the coordinates; Ruby checked her navigational display again. He was about a hundred miles ahead of them on their present course. "Norn Two, Ruby Lead. Estimate three-zero minutes to you, best speed. Where's Norn Lead?"

"Ruby Lead, Norn Lead, Three and Four are base plus forty ahead of me; I'm relaying." Ruby understood; the agreed on base number for the day was ten, so there were 150 miles between the two flights. Because of the distance and conditions, Pyrrha and Ruby couldn't talk to each other, so Oscar was acting as a communications relay, orbiting between the two flights. It was risky—being alone anywhere was, and GRIMM coming into Kazakh space was far from unusual—but necessary. Had there been an AWACS, its far more powerful radios would easily be able to coordinate, but there was no AWACS closer than Tehran, if then.

"Roger, Norn Two. Continue relay where you are; we'll catch up and you join on us."

"Roger that. Norn Two will relay; out."

Ruby put her map back in its kneepad. "Ruby Flight from Lead. What's your state?" Weiss, Blake, Yang and Qrow all read their fuel states back to her. They were still in decent if not great shape. As long as nothing else went wrong, they'd make it to the tanker with a little to spare.

* * *

_Northwest of Mary, Turkmenistan_

_26 July 2001_

"It sure would be nice if something went right today!" Ruby shouted. She didn't have to hold the sidestick of the F-16 with both hands, but it was a wonder. They were bouncing around, and Ruby could only hope she wasn't about to bounce right into Weiss. A quick glance: she could just make out the Typhoon's navigation lights through the murk. Ruby made sure her lights were on bright and steady; if she kept them blinking, it might disorient Weiss in the thick clouds.

They'd caught up to Oscar's orbiting F-18 near the Turkmenistan-Kazkahstan border; it had been easy to pick out the Hornet against a squall line right in front of him. They'd climbed to get above it, only to realize that the clouds extended nearly to seventy thousand feet. There was no choice but to penetrate the storm.

Now they were fighting it. It wasn't as bad as a thunderstorm, but the blizzard's winds were nearly as powerful, and sleet rattled against the aircraft like pistol shots. Ruby watched her instruments: looking outside was asking to get vertigo, which was a good way to die.

"Maria, think you can call the tanker?" Ruby didn't want to be distracted.

"Sure." Maria was glad of the distraction. "Ruby Lead Bravo to Green Anchor, do you read?"

The voice that came back was staticky and tinny, but audible. "Ruby Lead Bravo, Green Anchor. I read you strength three. No joy on radar."

"Green Anchor, Ruby Flight is at bearing zero-eight zero, one hundred miles. Visibility nil." Maria glanced down and gave the tanker how much fuel they had left. "We're not going to make it," she murmured without keying the radio.

"We're going to have to divert," Ruby said. "Green Anchor, Ruby Lead Alpha. We're not going to get to you. What's the weather like where you are?"

"Ruby Lead Alpha, weather is Delta Sierra." Ruby translated that in her head: dog shit. "We can tank, but it's iffy."

"Green Anchor, Norn Flight's state?"

"Ruby Lead Alpha, Norn Flight is Bravo Zulu." Ruby smiled at that; at least Pyrrha, Ren and Nora had gotten to refuel.

She made her decision. "Green Anchor, Ruby Flight is divert to…" She took a quick look at her kneepad. "Divert to Darvaza. Repeat, Ruby is diverting to Darvaza. Is Darvaza open?"

"Ruby Lead Alpha, unknown on Darvaza, but it was in use two weeks ago." The tanker navigator gave them bearings and distance. It was fifty miles; they could make it. "Will try to contact Darvaza."

"Ruby, roger. Turning now. Break. Ruby Flight, come starboard to bearing one-zero-five, execute." She began a slow turn to the right, and asked Maria to watch Weiss. The turn was made with no trouble. "Green Anchor, on heading. See you later."

"Roger that, Ruby. Good luck." The tanker signed off and it was quiet again except for the popping of the sleet.

Ruby Flight flew on for another ten minutes in silence, then the sleet stopped. Two minutes later, the clouds parted like a curtain to reveal open and blue sky. Below them was tan desert spotted with drifts of white snow; in the distance, there was a fair-sized lake. Just beyond the lake was another squall line, another storm following the first, looking just as nasty as its predecessor. Ruby curved to the right a little more, then saw a road meandering north—it was more of a track in the desert than an actual road, but it was a good reference. All she really had to do now was follow the road. "Darvaza Tower, Ruby Lead. How do you read?" There was no answer, but her navigation system picked up the airfield's TACAN system. Ruby repeated the message, but there was no answer. "I don't like this," Ruby said aloud. She looked at her map again. They might could make Ashgabat, though it would mean going back into the storm. "Ruby Flight, say state." Yang and Blake returned that they had enough fuel.

"Norn Two, bingo plus one," Oscar said.

"Crow 13, bingo _minus_ two," Qrow replied.

"That does it," Ruby sighed. Qrow did not have enough fuel to make it to Ashgabat; Oscar might not, if they ran into another headwind from the storm. It was Dervaza or someone was walking to Tehran. "Ruby Flight from Lead. No answer from Darvaza, but we got to get down. Crow 13, take the lead. Break. Darvaza Tower, Ruby Flight, do you read?"

The F-117 slid under the F-16 as Ruby kept up the radio calls, in vain. Now they picked up the field's localizer; its instrument landing system was working, though in the clear air, it would not be needed. Ruby climbed a little and spotted the runway: if it was snowcovered, they were going to have to think of something else. It was clear. "Crow 13, go ahead and land. I don't know what's going on."

"Ruby, Yang. Let me make a pass over the base. Just in case someone down there isn't friendly."

"Roger." Ruby was not crazy about her sister dragging for flak, but it was a good idea. Now she knew how Yang felt when she'd served as bait for Roman Torchwick at Mountain Glenn.

The F-23 accelerated to near supersonic speed and flew over Darvaza, first at medium altitude, and then at lower altitude. Finally, Yang just buzzed the tower. There was no response, but there was no ground fire, either. "Ruby, Yang. No joy. Not a thing."

"Crow 13, any chance you can make Ashgabat?"

"Negative."

"Shit," Ruby commented. "I sure fucked this up." She hit the mike button. "Straight in approach, Crow 13. I'll stay with you."

Ruby followed the F-117 all the way to the runway. Qrow made a smooth landing, his dragchute billowing behind the Nighthawk to slow the aircraft down. The maps said that the runway was long enough, but it was nice to have visual confirmation. After he pulled off onto the tarmac, Oscar landed next. Although she had less fuel than Weiss, Yang or Blake, Ruby insisted on being the last to land. She landed without a hiccup—the runway was in good condition—and taxied in next to Weiss. She opened the canopy, letting in moist air, and unstrapped her oxygen mask. "That feels good," she smiled, then stood up in the cockpit and saftied the ejection seat. Maria did the same. She wasn't sure quite how she was going to get down, but then Yang ran over with a ladder and set it against Maria's position. After Maria climbed down, Ruby carefully stretched from her seat to the ladder and followed her. "Where did you get the ladder?" she asked her sister.

"Over by the tower. Okay, this is weird," Yang said. "There's nobody here, but the runway's been cleared—and that storm can't have been gone more than half an hour."

Blake pointed up at the tower. Lights blinked atop it. "And the power's on."

"Maybe they're really shy?" Oscar ventured a joke. No one laughed.

Qrow looked at Ruby. "This reminds me of Kuroyuri."

Ruby nodded, with an involuntary swallow. There were no mountains for random Nuckalevee to hide behind, at least. The area around the airfield was rolling open desert. In the distance, she could see the town of Darvaza, about ten miles away. The airfield had the control tower, a pair of fair-sized hangars, a fuel tank farm, and what looked to be a few barracks and storage sheds. Everything was clean and uncluttered.

There just wasn't anyone in sight.

"Not good," Qrow continued. "I want someone in that tower."

"I got it," Ruby said. "Weiss, come with?"

Weiss shivered, which struck Ruby as being ironic. "I don't think I want to climb those stairs."

"I'll go," Blake volunteered.

They went over to the tower door. "It's locked," Ruby said, jiggling the doorknob.

Blake walked over, knelt, and clicked her tongue. "Weiss, can I borrow some hairpins?" The German girl reached up, undid her hair bun, and handed the pins to Blake. A minute later, the door clicked open. "Took a course in lockpicking from White Fang Academy," the Faunus grinned at them.

Ruby and Blake scampered up the stairs, rushing out of some sense of nameless dread. The tower was dark and silent, but mostly clean, though dusty in spots. Blake switched on the lights; the power was indeed on. There was a pair of high-powered binoculars, and Ruby peered through them, quartering the area around the base. "Nothing."

Blake felt her hackles rising. "Ruby, this is Twilight Zone stuff. We need to refuel and get the hell out of here, right now."

"No can do, my Faunus friend," Ruby sighed. She pointed to the west. "That storm's gonna be here in fifteen minutes. As soon as it's clear, we can head out, but we're gonna have to find somewhere to wait it out." Ruby did some fast calculations. "Dammit. If it stays steady…it'll take an hour or two to go over us. That puts us in Tehran in the dark." She made a sour expression. Tehran was notoriously hard to land at, because the approach was through the mountains. Even in the dark, with a working ILS, it would be difficult. This was assuming the ILS was working, which, from the briefing they had at Almaty from the locals, it often wasn't. She collapsed into a chair. "Blake, I hate saying this, swear to God…but we're going to have to stay here for the night."

"For the record, I want to state that that is a _very_ bad idea."

"You got a better one?"

"No." Blake rubbed her ears, which were cramped due to being under her helmet for five hours. "Okay, okay…let's go give the good news to everyone else."

Ruby nodded and started to get up, then noticed something underneath the radar console. "Whoa. Is that what I think it is?" She got down on her knees and picked it up. "Blake, check it out!" She held up a bolt-action rifle. "It's a Moisin-Nagant Model 1891/30! Russian sniper rifle—it's even got a scope!" She aimed down the scope, careful to keep it pointed away from Blake. "Cool! Just like Vasili Zaitsev!"

"And Simo Hayha. Though I think his was a Finnish version." Ruby glanced sidelong at her. "What, Ruby? I read a lot."

Ruby opened the bolt. "Hmm. Loaded, too. Full clip, five rounds." She set the rifle down and rummaged through some drawers, finding two more clips. "Yang's right. This is weird."

Blake ran her fingers across the dark wooden stock. "It's in superb condition. Someone's been taking care of it." She looked up at Ruby. "I wonder if maybe some sniper hangs out here, decoying in anyone who lands. They could shoot them when they get out of the cockpit."

"So why not cap us?" Ruby made a shooting noise.

"Too many of us, maybe? Or they're used to potting light plane pilots, not fighters. I don't know." Blake's ears flicked back, and she drew her pistol. "Grab the rifle, Ruby. The others might be in trouble."

Ruby slung the rifle, stuffed the clips into her flight suit, and followed Blake out the door.

* * *

The others were all right, but none of them felt good about Darvaza. The hangars were empty, though oil and fuel stains showed they had been used, and the hangars were clean, well-maintained. The fuel system worked.

The wind began to pick up, sending cold tendrils across the field, making it feel more like late fall than the middle of summer. The pilots gathered around the door, guns drawn; all of them had Beretta M9s, the standard sidearm of the USAF, except for Qrow and Maria: he raised his Smith and Wesson .38, the older issue service revolver. Maria just leaned on her cane.

"On three," Qrow whispered. He and Blake would breach the door; they had the most experience. He counted down with his fingers, then kicked in the door. Both went back behind the corners to avoid any gunfire, but the two-story barracks was as deserted as the base.

The door opened up into a lounge of some kind, with books lining the walls. The upholstered chairs looked a little worn, and the coffee table was chipped, but there was a brick fireplace with logs stacked next to it. The room smelled musty but not unpleasant. Stairs led up to the second floor across the room.

"Let's get a fire going," Maria said, and hobbled over to the fireplace.

"I got it. Yang, Weiss, Blake: clear the upstairs," Qrow ordered. They nodded and set off, slowly.

Oscar ran his fingers over the books. "This is like a library or something." The titles were in Cyrillic, though there was a smattering of Farsi books as well. He noticed one lying on the carpet, next to the fireplace. So did Maria, who picked it up. There was no title, but when she opened it, her eyebrows went up. "Odd. It's in English."

"This place is seriously creeping me out—" Ruby began, only to be interrupted by a scream. "That's Weiss!" She unslung the rifle and pounded up the stairs, followed by Oscar and Qrow; Maria sat in the nearest chair and shrugged. If there were monsters, it wasn't like she would be able to outrun them anyway.

Ruby came around the stair landing to see Yang and Blake, pistols raised at high port, while Weiss leaned against the doorjamb, shuddering. "What's going on?"

"Take a look," Yang replied, and motioned into the room. Ruby glanced in and nearly dropped the rifle in shock.

Unlike the rest of the base, the room was not clean; in fact, it was dusty, and the window clouded with age. The carpet had seen better days, and the bed was mildewed. It was not the bed that had caused Weiss to scream, however: there were two desiccated bodies in it, tucked in with the covers under their chins. The bodies' skin was like leather, stretched over their skulls, their eyes closed but deeply sunken in, the mouths fallen open in silent screams.

* * *

Maria glanced up as the leading edge of the storm hit the base, the wind picking up and sleet beginning to patter on the concrete sidewalks outside. She squinted, but the sheets of sleet soon turned their aircraft into shadows. "Good thing we closed the canopies," she mused. At least they could get to them quickly; the tarmac was only fifty feet from the barracks, between the hangars.

She decided to make the best of it as she heard the younger pilots moving around upstairs; there were no more screams or gunfire, so Maria figured it must be safe enough. She opened the book she and Oscar had found. "A diary," she commented. "Wing Commander Herman Bartleby's."


	10. Headhunter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ruby Flight is forced to spend the night at Darvaza, filled with the dead. 
> 
> But Darvaza has a terrible secret...if only Ruby Flight could wake up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I said that the "Lost Fable" chapter would be the longest of the story, then I turn around and ended up writing one just as long. I honestly should've divided this up into two chapters, but I couldn't think of a good place to really stop-plus I enjoyed writing this chapter a lot. The Apathy are my favorite Grimm in the show, and though this chapter definitely turns them on their head, I like how it turned out.
> 
> Some more notes at the end. BTW, if you like to listen to music while you read (I do while I write), some good ominous music would be appropriate for the first two-thirds of the story, and then something hard-paced for the last third-"Scorponok" from Transformers works nicely.

_Darvaza Airfield_

_Near Darvaza, Turkmenistan_

_26 July 2001_

Oscar fed the fire with some yellowed and cracked newspapers he had found, building the flames up to fill the lounge with a pleasant warmth. Weiss sat in front of it, warming her hands. "Can't believe it's July." She looked out the window where snow whirled in ghostly dervishes.

Ruby put a blanket around her. "You okay?"

Weiss sighed. "Yes. Sorry I screamed. Not often I see dead bodies, especially mummified ones."

Ruby chuckled. "I don't blame you. I probably would've peed myself on top of screaming." She turned, one hand on the pistol in its holster, as the door crashed open, admitting Qrow and Blake. Qrow brushed snow off his shoulders as Blake got the door closed. Both of them were carrying green bundles. "I got good news and bad news."

Maria didn't even look up from Wing Commander Bartleby's diary. "And we're waiting for it why?"

Qrow spared her a dirty look. "Good news is, despite what you see out the window, most of this stuff is just light snow—what we used to call popcorn snow back in California. It won't stick. It looks worse than it is. Probably melt by morning." He held up one of the bundles. "Found some coats. Only about three of them—looks like old Soviet military surplus, but the Russians knew how to make stuff that lasts. If anyone goes outside, this will keep you warm…though it's really not too cold out there; mid-forties." He held up a finger. "And nobody goes outside alone."

"What's the bad news?" Yang asked. "Other than we're stuck here until morning."

"Blake and I checked out the other barracks. More bodies—about ten of them. They're all in the same condition. Like they went to sleep and never woke up."

"No visible wounds," Blake added. At Weiss' wide-eyed look, she nodded. "Yes, Weiss, we looked at a few of the bodies. All of them are wearing pajamas or shorts—some are naked-but like I said, no visible wounds, like knife or bullet holes."

Weiss stood up and tossed the blanket to Ruby. "So we're not staying right? I say we fuel the aircraft and get the hell out of this place."

Qrow shook his head. "No, not a good idea. Like Ruby said earlier, we'd have to fight through this storm and try to land at Tehran at night. That approach is a bitch in the daytime with clear weather." He dropped into a chair. "We'll spend the night in Spookytown, though I suggest we all stay in this room. So get comfortable."

"Yeah, fat chance," Yang commented.

"All the same," Ruby said, "Weiss is right about one thing: we need to fuel the aircraft. And unless someone brought some food besides our survival rations, we need to think about eating, too." She looked at the former GRIMM Reaper. "Maria, does that diary have a last date on it?"

Maria quickly glanced at the last chapter head. She hesitated for a moment, then said, "It looks like May 10."

"Then the food should still be good." Ruby patted her survival vest. "If anyone drinks from the water taps, use your iodine tablets. We can't trust the water here."

Qrow groaned and levered himself out of the chair. "Glad someone was paying attention during survival school. Blake, Yang, let's go fuel the birds." He grabbed one of the coats and tossed the other two to Yang. "Why the hell do I have to go?" Yang complained.

"Because me Major, you Captain," Qrow shot back. Yang knew that tone of voice, and put the coat on, handing the other one to Blake. "Fine," she grumped. "Anything to get me out of this mausoleum." Qrow's coat was too short, Blake's was too big, but Yang's was just right, at least. They went back out into the storm, slamming the door behind them.

Weiss stared after them, clearly wanting to run out, fuel _Myrtenaster_ herself, and fly anywhere but Darvaza. Ruby nudged her. "C'mon, Weiss. Food always makes me feel better. Let's check out the chow hall." They'd noticed a small cafeteria adjoining the barracks; at least they wouldn't have to go out into the wind.

"Right." Weiss unholstered her pistol as they left.

* * *

Oscar poked at the fire a little. "Anything interesting in the diary?"

"So far it's routine. The Royal Air Force restored this base as an emergency divert field back in the mid-90s. They use it for flights from Cyprus to Hong Kong and India. Looks like Bartleby took command about a year ago." She turned a page. "Nothing unusual so far…except that last entry. The one Ruby had me look up."

Oscar leaned back on his elbows. "What's that?"

"I wonder if Bartleby was losing his mind." She put one finger in the book to keep her place, then flipped to the end, about two-thirds of the way through the diary. She squinted. "It's very odd, especially given what I've read so far. Completely different way of writing…almost like someone else was writing, but it's Bartleby's." She showed Oscar, comparing the early entry with the last; they were clearly written by the same person.

"What's it say?"

"'We cannot get out. We cannot get out. The end comes soon. We hear drums, drums in the deep.'" Maria looked up at Oscar, worry etched on the lined face. "'They are coming.'"

Oscar went pale. "Oh, shit. I know that quote."

"Oh?"

"It's from _Lord of the Rings._ The last stand of the dwarves of Moria, against a horde of orcs. I think that was Balin's last entry—no, it was Ori." Oscar nodded. "Yeah, it was Ori."

Maria thought Oscar might as well be speaking Esperanto for all she understood him. She'd heard of _Lord of the Rings,_ but she'd never read it. "So why did he quote an old fantasy novel? Was he losing his mind?"

Oscar audibly swallowed. "Maybe it's a warning."

* * *

Blake fastened the refueling nozzle to the fueling point on Qrow's F-117. She waved at Yang, who switched on the fuel pump. The hose rumbled and Blake smelled the distinct aroma of jet fuel. After making sure there were no leaks, she walked over to Yang. Qrow was pulling security, standing some feet away with his pistol drawn. "Looks like we're passing gas," she told Yang.

Yang only gave her a bit of a smile at the old joke. She blew on her hands. "Weiss is right. This place creeps me out. And a snowstorm in July?"

"We've gotten them in Menagerie in July…up in the highlands."

"What do you think happened here?" Yang motioned around the airfield.

"I don't know. Maybe water contamination." She sniffed at the wind. "It smelled weird in the barracks. I can't place it, though."

"Decaying bodies?"

Blake shook her head. "No, I know what those smell like. It's something else. I don't know. Maybe stagnant water or something."

Yang looked at the fuel meter. Luckily Darvaza used NATO-style pressure fueling, which meant for a quick refueling; some air forces used gravity feed, which was cheaper but more time-consuming. Qrow's aircraft was already two-thirds full. She put a hand on her forehead. "Wooof."

Blake gave her a worried look. "Hey, you okay?"

"Yeah….I guess. I don't know. I'm just tired." She smiled at Blake. "It's not jet fuel fumes. I love the smell of JP-8 in the morning. Or evening." She checked the meter. "Okay…and…done." She switched off the fuel feed. "I'll help you with the hose. We'll do Oscar's Bug next." They went over to disconnect the hose and drag it over to the F-18. As they unhooked the hose, Yang looked around, then nearly dropped the hose, stumbling backwards, going for her pistol. _"Jesus!"_ she screamed.

Blake's Beretta was in her hand in half a second. She pointed it where Yang was looking, but there was nothing there. Qrow whirled in their direction as well. "What? What is it?" he yelled.

"Yang?" Blake asked.

Yang blinked, then rubbed her eyes with her free hand, then holstered her pistol. "It's…it's nothing. Sorry. Just seeing things." Qrow growled something incoherent and went back to watching the field.

"Are you okay?" Blake repeated.

"Yeah." Yang picked up the hose and helped to get it over to the Hornet. "Didn't hardly sleep last night. I had the dream…the one I told you about." Her fingers started shaking, and not from the cold. "I think that damn briefing or whatever you call it, the one we got from JINN…I think it spooked me for some reason. I haven't had the dream since Weiss and I got to Japan, but it was back with a vengeance last night." She watched Blake hook the hose up to the refueling point. "Could've swore I saw Adam standing right over there, by Rubes' F-16. Sword and all."

"Qrow!" Blake called out. "Can you get the fuel going? I'll take over security." She didn't want to interrupt Yang. After the argument the night before, Blake had worried that Yang was slipping back into her depression, and she wanted to keep her friend talking. Qrow waved and ambled over to the fuel, switching it on.

"Blake," Yang asked, in a voice barely audible over the wind, "where do you think Adam went?"

"I wish I knew." Blake felt herself shiver, and _that_ had nothing to do with the cold, either. "The White Fang is crippled, but it's not completely finished. He may have tried to find some remaining cells. And with Sienna dead, he'd be in sole control now. Assuming, of course, he's still not trying to hunt me down." She scanned the horizon, pistol back in hand, remembering her Marine training: rifleman first, pilot second. Luckily, being with the White Fang had helped her there, too. "Adam's strong, Yang, but his real power comes from being able to control people. He used to get in my head…there towards the end, he liked to gaslight me, pretend that everything going wrong in our relationship was my fault. But he was just pulling me down in the gutter with him." Involuntarily, she looked at Yang's hand.

Yang noticed the look and held it up to stare at it, flexing the fingers. "I'm going to kill that bastard someday," she snarled.

She reached out and took Yang's hand. "Hey, I'm not going anywhere. Next time we see him, I promise I'll be there to help kill the bastard too." Yang grinned and nodded. Blake relaxed some; Yang's anger seemed to be dissipating—or at least was transferred from her to Adam. "And I'll protect you," Blake added helpfully.

Yang's smile instantly disappeared. "What did you say?"

"I said…" _Oh shit,_ Blake thought. She'd said exactly the wrong thing. "I…" Qrow whistled loudly, and Yang went to unhook the nozzle; her body language told Blake that whatever tenous peace had been restored was shattered again. "I'm…I'm sorry. That came out wrong—"

"I get it." Yang pulled the nozzle free and began to walk towards the F-16. "C'mon. Got more to do."

"But what about—"

"We're fine. Let's go." Blake followed Yang, shoulders slumped.

* * *

Ruby and Weiss found the cafeteria to be like most of the barracks: clean but deserted. Everything was put in place; the plates—marked with the crest of the British Royal Air Force—were clean and hung up, all the cooking utensils neatly in place. Ruby looked at the stove, and ran her fingers over it. "It's clean, but I think it's been used."

"How recently?"

"Maybe a few days or a week or so? I don't know." Pistols drawn, they opened a door. It was deserted as well, but it was a wine cellar, very well stocked. "Whoa," Ruby commented. "Maybe we'd better keep this room closed."

"Why's that?" Weiss wanted to know.

"This morning. Weiss, I don't think Qrow overslept. I think he went down to the airport bar and got plastered." She shrugged. "Y'know, after what JINN told us…I guess I can understand it."

"And he _flew?_ "

"I think Uncle Qrow has a lot of drunk flight hours." Ruby sighed. "He's an alcoholic, but try telling him that."

"I know," Weiss said. "Believe me, I know. My mother…she has the same problem." It occurred to Weiss that Ruby might not know that Willow Schnee was a drunk as well. She couldn't remember if she'd told her friend. Things felt a little fuzzy, and Weiss knew she needed to sleep soon, before she simply passed out. The bodies in the bed were going to haunt her as it was.

They shut the door and kept exploring. "Come on, come on," Ruby chanted. "Gotta be some food around here somewhere. We're never getting to Iran on an empty stomach!"

Weiss put a hand on her shoulder. "Ruby…are we really still going to Europe?"

Ruby stared at her. "Well, duh. One thing, we've been ordered there."

"I know, but that was before JINN. I mean…how do you defeat someone who wants to destroy the world? Salem doesn't want to be a conqueror, Ruby. She wants to die. How do you beat someone like that? I don't know that we can."

"Are you serious?" Ruby asked incredulously.

Weiss took her hand away and rubbed her forehead. "No…I don't know. I'm just exhausted, and I really, _really_ hate this place."

Ruby looked at her with concern for a moment, then continued on to the last door they hadn't checked. She eased it open and switched on the light. "Hot damn! Mother lode!" Weiss came in after her. On the wall were lined up canned goods, along with rows of packaged food, and bottled water. "Perfect! MREs!" Ruby grabbed one of the boxes. "Or the British version. ORPs, I guess." She read the label, marked with a large Union Jack. Then she set down the box and grabbed a can of beans. "Man, I can make us a mean Irish stew with this stuff!"

"No thanks," Weiss said. "We eat that many beans, and we'll fart our way to Tehran."

Ruby burst out laughing. "You must be tired if you're cracking jokes, Weiss."

"I told you." Weiss grabbed two of the ORP boxes. Then she noticed the far wall. Unlike the other three walls, which were lined with shelves of food, that wall was empty, aside from the double doors of a cellar. She got closer to it, and saw that the doors were chained shut, with a simple bike lock. She wrinkled her nose; the smell of spoiled meat came from it. She thought she heard something moving around beneath, and drew back. Ruby had walked up as well, and also stepped back. "Ew. Meat locker. It must've gone bad."

"What's that noise?" Weiss asked, taking three more steps back.

Ruby listened close. It sounded like something rattling, and scuffling. "Great. Probably rats."

Weiss took _ten_ steps back, going more pale than usual. "Rats? Are these safe to eat?" She held up the boxes.

Ruby checked them. "Yeah. Nothing's been gnawed on. They're probably snacking on the meat."

Weiss looked sick. "I'm sleeping with my gun tonight."

* * *

_Tehran Mehrabad International Airport_

_Tehran, Monarchial Republic of Iran_

_27 July 2001_

The odd cold storm that had deposited light snow across Turkmenistan had dumped more snow on the mountains north of Tehran as well. The temperature dipped enough that Nora saw her breath misting in front of her as she stood on the tarmac. The weather was clear now, leaving a beautiful, starry sky and a bright moon reflecting on the snow below.

She turned as Ren came up to her. He put an arm around her. "You should come back to bed. It's freezing out here. And it's three in the morning."

"Do you know if we heard anything else from Ruby and the others?"

Ren shook his head. "Same thing as before-they were diverting to Darvaza. With the storm, and communications being spotty…they probably decided to stay the night there and fly here in the morning. It's a RAF base, so I imagine they were wined and dined in true British fashion." He smiled reassuringly. "We'll see them in the morning, Nora."

"I don't know, Ren." She looked up at them. "Look, I have a sixth sense about these things. I'm the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter!"

Ren gave her a skeptical look. "No, you're not."

She shrugged. "Well, okay…but I could be, you know." She grew serious again. "Still, Ren. Something just doesn't smell right about this."

"I agree." They turned to see Pyrrha walking out as well. Ren and Nora were in their only set of casual clothes they'd packed with them, but Pyrrha was already in her flight suit. "Something seems wrong to me as well." Her mouth quirked into a smile. "Though I'm not a seventh daughter of anything, I'm afraid. I was an only child."

Ren slowly nodded. "Well, since we're all awake, we might as well get an early start." He checked his watch. "Dawn is in two hours. We can go change, get the night crew to fuel us up, and get going. We'll need a tanker."

Nora playfully punched his shoulder. "Now you're talking." She looked at _Magnhild_ in the moonlight. The A-10 looked squat and archaic next to the sleek J-10 and the otherworldly F-22. "Still got a feeling…" Her voice trailed off, then she moved past Ren to go find the ordnance loaders.

* * *

_Darvaza Airfield_

_Near Darvaza, Turkmenistan_

_27 July 2001_

Ruby's eyes opened, and she sat up with a groan. There was sunlight streaming through the windows, and she could see the reddish clouds heralding the dawn. _Sun's up,_ she thought fuzzily. _Huh._ She flopped back down onto the blankets—taken from beds _without_ dead people in them, and musty, but warm enough-and checked her watch. _0600\. We get up at 0500. Cool. I've got another hour to sleep._ She closed her eyes, then opened them again. _Wait a second. That's not right. We're an hour…oh shit._ Ruby sat up again, rubbed her eyes. "Shit," she said aloud, through a mouth that felt like she'd been stuffing cotton into it. She reached over and grabbed what was left of her bottle of water, and used it to swish out her mouth. _Bleah. Need to brush my teeth. Better get everyone up first, we're already late._ She supposed that was a problem, but with blue sky in between the clouds, it promised to be a nice day, and they could take their time getting to Iran. In fact, Ruby strongly considered just letting everyone go back to sleep, including herself. She didn't remember dreaming, but she felt even more exhausted than she had the night before.

Then she heard the clatter of a bottle on the hardwood floor. Ruby looked over. They had posted a guard all night, with Maria taking the first three-hour watch (having reacted angrily when Ruby told her it was bedtime; Ruby wondered why Boomers were so bad tempered), Oscar the second, and Qrow the third. It was Qrow's job to wake them at 0500, which he clearly had not.

And now Ruby knew why. It was a bottle of gin, an empty one.

Anger flooded Ruby's body, wiping away the fatigue. She got up and stalked over to her uncle. He was barely sitting in the chair he'd scooted over by the window, his revolver on the sill. She reached out and grabbed the pistol, then scooted Qrow's chair out from under him. He fell on the floor with a thump, and his eyes opened. "Get up, Uncle Qrow," Ruby snapped. She kicked him in the boot. "Get up, dammit!"

Qrow stared at her blearily. "What's goin' on? Leave me alone." His eyelids fluttered closed again.

Ruby kept the gun in her hand as she opened up the curtains, letting sunlight flood the room. Assorted groans and muttered curses in several languages answered her. "Everyone up!" she shouted. That was meant with more groans and several calls for Ruby to have sex with herself. She was tempted to fire the revolver into the ceiling, but instead set it down on the sill again. Then she picked up the empty bottle and left the room. She wasn't gone long, and came back with an empty metal garbage can from the cafeteria. Ruby then ran the bottle around the rim of the can, making an earsplitting racket, then slammed it repeatedly against the wood floor. "I said," she shouted at the top of her lungs, _"get up!"_

Slowly, Ruby Flight—plus Maria and Oscar—threw off their blankets and got to their feet. Oscar checked his watch. "Oh shit. We overslept."

"No shit, Sherlock!" Ruby yelled. She knew she was taking her anger for her uncle out on Oscar, but right now didn't care. Yang went over and saw Qrow, and put the pieces together. "Dammit," she breathed.

"We've got to get going. Come on. Come _on_ , Weiss." Uncharacteristically, since she was normally a morning person, Weiss was the slowest of all of them to get up, looking like every movement of her body was a task that took several minutes. Oscar wasn't too far behind her. He tried twice to get up, but wasn't making it. "Oscar, did you take the second watch?" Ruby demanded.

"Yeah, yeah," he insisted, and looked to Maria for support. She nodded.

"And you woke up Uncle Qrow?"

"Sure did."

"Which means he fell asleep on watch."

"He was drinking," Yang said.

"Drinking _and_ asleep on watch." Maria shook her head. "Maybe we should shoot him. Technically, it's legal—"

Ruby knew Maria was only kidding, but at the moment she was so enraged that shooting her own uncle didn't sound like a bad idea. She rubbed her eyes again. _Damn, I'm not this irritable ever. I need a warm, soft bed. I hate this fucking place._ She thought darkly that maybe she should have the flight strafe Darvaza after they took off. It was dead anyway. "Weiss!" she yelled, as the German girl fell back onto her blankets.

"My leg hurts," she whined.

Yang picked up the bottle and set it aside. "I'm starting to think the universe doesn't want us to make it to Europe. First the damn GRIMM attack that was _way_ bigger than what we expected, then JINN's bullshit—" she spared the console a withering glance; it had been sitting next to Oscar for the whole night "—then that damn storm, two of the fuckers, and we end up in the fucking House of the Dead here." She leaned against the back of Maria's chair. The older woman was on her feet, stretched, and grimaced as her body made a few popping noises. "God, I'm tired of this shit. I'm tired _period._ "

Blake yawned. "Me too. This gets old…fighting all the damn time."

"We _are_ fighter pilots," Ruby pointed out.

"Ruby's right," Oscar said, finally getting to his feet. "We're saving the world, remember?" The joke fell flat. "Or delaying the inevitable," he said, in a considerably more subdued voice.

Ruby pulled an unresisting Weiss up to a sitting position. Weiss grabbed a bottle of water and splashed some into her eyes, trying to wake up. "I don't even know why we're going to Europe. Why can't we just give JINN to Pyrrha or something? They'll let her through the blockade. I really don't want to get within a thousand miles of my piece of shit father."

"I'm not crazy about the idea," Ruby admitted, "but we've got orders."

"Yeah? Well, fuck our orders," Yang snapped. "Fuck our orders, fuck Arashikaze, fuck Ozpin, fuck Salem, and fuck JINN." Yang snatched up the console, stomped past Ruby, and headed for the cafeteria. "Fuck it _all._ I'm done." Ruby watched her in shock, then her eyes widened when she heard Yang yell back, "Hey, Weiss! Where's that meat locker you were telling us about last night?"

Ruby took off running, followed by Blake and Yang. Maria rolled her eye and grabbed Oscar. "Let's go preflight the birds."

"What about Major Branwen?" Oscar picked up JINN and cradled it in the crook of his elbow.

"What about him?" Maria stared down at Qrow, who was now passed out. "What a disappointment." She flung open the door, and cold, fresh air flooded in. There was frost on the ground, along with what remained of the popcorn snow. Oscar took a deep breath, and it helped ease the crushing fatigue. "Man, that feels good." He stepped out onto the sidewalk, and noticed movement to the west. "Hey, Miss Calavera! Take a look!"

"Colonel Calavera," Maria sighed. "What?"

"Looks like the locals have finally decided to say hello." Oscar waved at the people walking towards them, about a hundred yards off. "Hello! Good to see you!" He supposed they didn't speak English, but he didn't speak any other languages.

Maria squinted. "What are they carrying? Are they carrying something?"

"Yeah, they're…uh oh." Oscar suddenly realized that these might indeed be locals, but they didn't look happy to see him. They were all carrying weapons of some kind; he only saw a few guns, and the rest had melee weapons. Many of them looked improvised, but all of them looked deadly. There were easily a hundred of them, possibly more, and they were advancing down the airfield's one street, towards the barracks, from the town to the south. "I think we're in trouble."

* * *

"Yang, what the hell are you doing?" Ruby shrilled, as Yang approached the meat locker.

"Being smart," Yang returned irritably. "Look, Ozpin put JINN in that vault in Tsushima, right? So what if we tossed the damn thing down there? This place is deserted, and everyone's dead. Salem would never think to look for it here. It's safer here than it was in Japan." She tugged at the lock. "Blake, would you do the honors?"

Blake hesitated. "I don't know…"

" _Goddammit, Blake! Fucking pick the fucking lock!"_ Yang screamed, startling them. Blake's ears flattened, not in anger but in fear, and she ran over to the lock. Weiss joined her, handing her the hairpins.

Ruby stepped forward. "Yang, this is a terrible idea."

"Shut up, Ruby. I'm tired of being someone's fucking pawn." Yang tapped her foot impatiently while Blake got the lock open.

As if she was in a trance, Ruby slowly unholstered her pistol; like everyone but Weiss, she'd taken her survival vest off, but kept the shoulder holster. She thumbed the safety off. "Yang, I'm giving you an order. Do _not_ do this."

Yang turned to her, and blinked at the pistol. She blinked again, then shook her head. "Ruby…c'mon…you know this is a good idea. Salem will never find it here."

"Give me JINN," Ruby ordered. Technically, Yang still outranked her—they were both captains, but Yang had more time in service. At the moment, however, Yang could've been a four-star general and Ruby would still be ordering her. All her frustration and rage at Qrow, at Ozpin, at the entire world was bubbling up, and her fingers tightened around the Beretta's grip. "I mean it, Yang."

"God, Ruby, have you gone crazy?" Yang did not move to give her the console. "I'm your sister."

"Shut up, Yang." The pistol came up halfway.

Both of them jumped as Blake let the cellar doors fall open. Then they instantly forgot about JINN, because a horrific smell wafted up from the cellar, worse than it had been the night before, along with a blast of cold air. "What the hell _is_ that?" Yang exclaimed.

Blake bent down and peered into the cellar. "There's something down there."

Weiss had looked like she was going to fall asleep on her feet, but that perked her up. " _Grusse Gott._ Rats."

"No…" Blake reached into her flight suit and pulled out her cell phone. She flipped it open and used the light to shine into the cellar. It was so dark that even her excellent night vision could only make out shadows, but the light not only gave off enough light for the Faunus to see, the rest of them could as well.

"Those are…bodies…" Blake's voice trailed off and she walked down the stairs halfway into the cellar. Ruby, Weiss and Yang stayed at the top of the stairs, bending over to look in. Blake shined the light around, then nearly dropped her phone.

There were at least twenty bodies hanging from the ceiling. All were naked, streaked with dried blood; some had limbs missing, and a number had a visible bullet hole through their skulls. All had chunks carved out of them, expertly and cleanly, like a butcher. Blake scrambled back out of the cellar. "Oh my _God!"_

"What…what the hell…" Yang stammered.

"They've…someone's been taking pieces off…" Ruby whispered, though they were the only ones in the storeroom. "Like…"

Blake shut off her cell phone and slammed the cellar doors. "Like someone's been eating them."

That was it for Weiss. She turned, fell to her knees, and vomited. Ruby was about to join her, when they heard gunfire coming from the front of the barracks.

* * *

Oscar took cover behind the corner of the barracks and fired two shots from his pistol. One of the crowd went down, but the others advanced inexorably forward, like a human wave. One raised an AK-47 and fired back; Oscar got back behind the corner, fighting down panic as he heard the bullets go past.

Maria, still inside, grabbed Qrow's revolver and fired at the crowd; she couldn't pick out individual targets, but hoped it would keep their heads down. The townspeople—if that was who they were—finally sought cover, as they realized that they were facing more than one gun. Another AK spoke, and Maria ducked down as the window shattered.

Qrow woke up. "What the fuck?"

Maria kicked him. "We're under attack, you dumbass! Get the hell up or we're going to die!" She tossed him the revolver as Ruby Flight arrived, pistols drawn. They ducked as another window shattered under the fusillade.

"How many?" Weiss grabbed a blanket and wiped her mouth.

"How should I know?" Maria yelled back. "I'm blind, dammit!"

"Where's Oscar?" Ruby asked.

"Outside!"

Yang caught movement in the corner of one eye and turned. She got a glimpse of a man dressed in rags grabbing the windowsill with one hand and raising an axe with the other. Yang shot him in the face and he fell back in a welter of blood. She chanced a look out the window, and fired another two shots at someone raising a shotgun. She missed, but the gunman ducked back behind a shed. "Who the hell _are_ these people?"

"The villagers from Darvaza!" Ruby yelled. "It has to be!"

"The cannibals!" Weiss added.

"The _what?!"_ Maria and Qrow said at the same time. Getting shot at had a way of sobering him up fast.

Weiss fired a quick shot out the window, and heard a scream. "There's more of them than we have bullets."

"We need an exit!" Maria shouted.

"I saw a back door last night! Come on!" Ruby began to head towards the back, stopped for a second, and grabbed the Moisin-Nagant. "Guys! I'm going to get to the tower and cover you with the rifle! When I start shooting, you start running!"

"You got it!" Yang yelled back, their argument forgotten. She tossed Ruby the JINN console.

Maria grabbed her cane and stuffed Bartleby's diary down the front of her flight suit. "I'll come with you. Give me your pistol!"

Ruby wanted to say something about giving a weapon to someone who was supposedly mostly blind, but there wasn't time. She handed the Beretta to Maria and dashed under the staircase. There was a fire door there, and she almost kicked it open—then realized she should probably check if it was locked. It wasn't, but she eased it open all the same. No shots came; the villagers hadn't gotten this far yet. "No offense, Maria, but you'd better keep up," she told the older woman.

"Let me go first. They may not see me as a threat." She kept the pistol out of sight and began limping across the short strip of grass to the tarmac, using her cane. Oscar saw her and whipped around, raising his pistol, then realized it was Maria at the last moment. He saw Ruby, and she rushed over to him. "You okay?"

"Yeah." He fired blindly around the corner. "Think I got two shots left and then I'm on my spare mag. What's the plan?"

"I'm going up the tower." She raised the rifle. "When I start shooting, you cover the rest of the flight. As soon as they're out the back, you book it too, okay?"

"You got it." He nodded at her. "I think I saw four guys with AKs. Nail them first—maybe the others will run."

"Will do. Take care of JINN, okay?" Ruby set the console down next to him. She felt a powerful urge to kiss Oscar, but settled for a quick squeeze of his shoulder. Seeing Maria at the tarmac, she ran, passing the old woman, and reached the tower door. Luckily, they hadn't bothered locking it again. She held the door open for Maria, who yelled "Don't worry about me! Go!"

Ruby was about to run up the stairs when the barracks exploded.

* * *

Yang ejected the spent magazine from her Beretta and reloaded. She believed in being prepared a little more than Oscar, so she still had another. She checked the window. "Hey, they're pulling back!"

Qrow looked as well as he finished dropping the spent shells from his revolver. "You're right. Better get ready to make a run—"

He was cut off by a tremendous roar of noise and the roof fell in at the little hallway between the lounge and the cafeteria. Yang felt herself blown backwards to land hard on her rear; Weiss, who had been covering Qrow, fell on top of him and knocked both of them to the floor.

Yang shook her head, trying to clear it. Her ears were ringing, and she looked frantically for Blake. The Faunus was sprawled on the floor, lying on her side, her eyes wide and unblinking. Yang crawled towards her. "Blake…get up…"

Blake slowly looked up, dazed. She finally blinked and looked confused. "It's fine." Then she yawned and shook her head. "It's fine," she repeated in shock. She stared at Yang, and regained some of her senses. "I can't hear. I can't hear!" she screamed.

Yang reached her and grabbed her hand. As she did so, she was suddenly tackled by someone, knocking her away from the Faunus. A knife flashed down, and instinctively Yang brought up her right arm. The knife glanced off of it with a spark of metal on metal, and whoever had tackled her looked at the arm in surprise. Yang had managed to keep her pistol in her left hand somehow, and jammed it into her attacker's stomach. She pulled the trigger four times. It was at that moment that Yang realized her assailant was a woman, who screamed in horrific pain at the first shot, which hit her in the stomach. The other bullets found lungs, and the woman's scream turned into a gurgle. She tried to stab Yang again, but her strength was ebbing with her life, and the blade only cut the flight suit. Then she fell on Yang, coughed blood on Yang's cheek, and died.

Qrow pulled the corpse off of her and Yang shakily stood. Weiss shot two more people trying to climb in through the windows before Oscar's accurate shooting finally drove them back. Yang grabbed a dazed Blake and threw the Faunus over her shoulder in a fireman's carry. The slide on Weiss' Beretta locked back; Yang threw her own Beretta to Weiss. Weiss knew there wasn't time to reload; she dropped her pistol, caught Yang's with her left hand, and started firing again. "What the hell _was_ that?" she yelled to no one in particular.

"Mortar," Qrow replied. "We gotta get out of here." They all ducked as another explosion rocked the building. "That was over. The next one is going to fall right on top of us."

* * *

Ruby reached the control tower and slid open one of the windows. She braced the Moisin against one of the radar consoles and looked through the scope. She could see smoke spiraling up from the collapsed part of the barracks, and prayed her friends were still alive. There wasn't time for anything else. Ruby hoped she had remembered to chamber a round, saw one of the villagers with an AK-47, and rested the sight on him. _Aim low,_ she heard her father's voice, when Taiyang had been teaching his daughters how to hunt. As the gunman leaned out to shoot at Oscar, she settled the crosshairs on his belly and fired. The shot actually missed—she'd aimed _too_ low—but the puff of dirt between his legs caused the man to leap back under cover. Ruby tried to keep her sight on him as she worked the bolt to chamber a new round. She was searching for another target when the tower rocked with another explosion. The windows cracked but didn't shatter. "What the hell is that?" she screamed, unconsciously echoing her sister.

"A mortar!" Maria had made it to the tower, puffing like a steam locomotive, hunched over in pain. "He's walking in his rounds!"

"Got to find him…" Ruby frantically moved the scope from side to side, and spotted the mortar team: they were at the base perimeter, just inside the fence—which had several sections removed. It had been intact the night before. She fired a hasty shot at them as the loader reached up to drop a round in. She missed again, but the shot made the team duck. Ruby quickly worked the bolt again, fired again, missed again. "Dammit! I can't hit shit!"

"Ruby," Maria said calmly, "what color are your eyes?"

She fired again. "What does that have to do with—"

"What color?" The GRIMM Reaper's voice was still calm, her breathing even.

"They're silver!"

Maria put a hand on her shoulder. "Easy. Take a deep breath. Calm down."

"The mortar—"

"Calm down. Breathe. Concentrate. See the target. Aim. Breathe. Slowly. Concentrate. Think of nothing else but the target. Breathe."

Ruby tried to listen to her. She slowed down her breathing, trying to get her heart to stop pounding, and settled the crosshairs on the loader, who was raising up to drop the round down the tube. She could see his clothing, which was old and ragged, patched with mismatching cloth; she noticed he was wearing new combat boots; he hadn't shaved that morning; his eyes were blue. Slowly she let out her breath, and pulled the trigger. The Moisin cracked. A second later, the loader's head exploded and he collapsed forward, the round rolling out of his hand.

Maria's hand on her shoulder was reassuring. She was still speaking, but Ruby only heard the calm tone of her voice, not the words. She shifted targets to the next man, who was reaching forward to grab the fallen round. Ruby fired again, and he slumped lifeless over the tube. The third man on the mortar got up and ran away; Ruby ignored him.

"Reload," Maria ordered, but Ruby was already fishing a clip out of her flight suit and pressing it into the Moisin. She concentrated on the crowd now. _Target at 240 feet._ She fired. The villager fell backwards, blood spurting from their chest. _Hit; target killed. Shift target to man with saber, 270 feet._ Ruby pulled the trigger. Her shot took the man in the side. _Hit. Target wounded, retreating, no threat. Shift fire. Woman with AK-47 at 550 feet._ She pulled the trigger; the woman's head disappeared. _Shift target_.

* * *

Oscar reloaded as the rest of Ruby Flight came out the fire door. "Is Blake hit?" he asked.

"Got her bell rung by that mortar." Yang looked up at the tower as she heard another shot. "That must be Ruby. She's always been a good shot with a rifle; doesn't miss much."

"She isn't missing at all! I've been watching. I think she got the mortar."

Qrow glanced over at the flightline. "Doesn't look like they've been messing with the airplanes. We'd better get over to them in a hurry. I don't think Ruby doesn't have many shots left."

"Yang…" Blake groaned. "You can put me down…"

Yang gently set her friend on the ground. "Can you hear me?" Blake shook her head, very slowly. "How many fingers am I holding up?"

"Why are you flipping me off for?" Blake yelled. "You're an asshole, Yang!"

"I see Blake's feeling better," Weiss quipped.

Ruby fired once more, and suddenly it was quiet. Oscar leaned out from around the corner. Four bodies lay on the ground, plus the ones that they'd shot with the pistols. It wasn't many, but the villagers were pulling back. "I think they're leaving."

"Yeah, only until they figure out we're almost out of—" Weiss held up a hand, cutting Qrow off. "What—"

"Shh!" She listened for a moment, then reached into her survival vest. Everyone else had taken theirs off to sleep, but Weiss, afraid of the rats, had kept hers on. She pulled out a radio, about the size of a cell phone—the AN/PRQ-7, the standard issue NATO survival radio—and extended the antenna, then turned up the volume. "—by Flight, Norn Four, come up on Guard. Ruby Flight, Norn Four, come up on Guard." The voice was unmistakably Nora Valkyrie's.

Weiss pushed the transmit button. "Norn Four, Ruby Two! Good to hear you, Nora!"

"Hey, hey!" Nora laughed. "There you guys are. Everything okay? Why aren't you in the air? The Brits stuffing you with bangers and mash and spotted dick or something—"

Yang grabbed the radio out of Weiss' hands. "Nora, Yang! We're in deep shit! There's a whole bunch of fucking cannibals trying to kill us!"

"Say again?" Nora's voice was a mixture of amusement and confusion.

Weiss grabbed the radio back. "Nora, Weiss. We are under attack from local villagers. What's your location?" She jumped a little as Ruby opened fire again.

"They're moving forward!" Oscar crouched and aimed. Qrow leaned out and did the same.

"Roger, Weiss! I'm three minutes out! Can you mark the target?"

"Negative. I'm popping a flare to mark our position." Weiss tried to hold the radio and grab a flare at the same time from her vest, but Yang was ahead of her. Like many fighter pilots, Yang carried a spare flare in a leg pocket; she withdrew the pen flare, twisted the cap, and pressed the tiny trigger, aiming it away from them. The flare popped and fired a bright red comet into the morning sky.

"Weiss, Nora! I've got a red!"

Weiss risked her life by stepping out into full view of the attackers for a moment, but it was enough to see before she got back under cover. "Nora, your targets are personnel at 50 yards south of the flare. We are between the burning barracks and the tower. Do you have us in sight?"

"I got your flare. Making my run west to east. Get your butts down; danger close!"

"Get down! Get down! Danger close!" Weiss yelled. Yang dropped down and shielded Blake with her own body, while Qrow and Oscar hunkered down behind the corner. Weiss dropped flat and watched the sky.

She saw Nora before she heard the A-10; the twin turbofans made the Warthog remarkably quiet. The nose disappeared in smoke; a second passed before Weiss heard the sound of tearing fabric, a deep throated _BRRRRTTT_. The A-10 flashed over and turned hard, engines whining.

* * *

"Holy God," Ruby whispered as she loaded her last clip. Two dozen people simply vanished before her eyes into red mist and severed limbs: thirty millimeter depleted uranium cannon shells, meant to tear apart GRIMM, did horrific things to human flesh. She had spotted Nora just before the A-10 had opened fire; she had no idea where her friend had come from, but was very glad of it.

"Let's hope not," Maria commented. "We need to move."

"Yeah." Ruby leaned forward, cupping her hand to her mouth as she yelled out the window. "Ruby Flight! Go! Go!" Then she went back to looking through her scope. "Damn! They're _still_ coming!" The villagers had dropped down after the strafing run, but now they were getting back up and starting to run. Nora had annihilated the first rank, but there were still easily a hundred more.

"They're trying to grab us by the belt, so Nora can't make any more runs." Maria tugged at her. "Come _on!"_

"Or they're hungry," Ruby replied. She shrugged off Maria's hand, aimed, and fired again, twice. She had three rounds left.

* * *

"Move! Move!" Qrow pushed Oscar to his feet and ran after him, grabbing JINN. "Get to the birds! I got the console!"

Yang hauled Blake to her feet and started to pick her up. "I can run!" Blake shouted. She stumbled, but kept her feet as Yang helped her along. Weiss was the last to leave: she saw Nora rolling in again. "Nora, Weiss. You've got more personnel, about 150 yards from us. Make your run east to west this time."

"Weiss, you'd better move your ass!" Nora ordered. "I'm dropping nape!"

Weiss took a moment before she realized what that meant. She turned and fled for all she was worth. "Run! Run!" she yelled at the others. She didn't look behind her.

* * *

Nora rolled in again, putting the bombsight pipper slightly ahead of her targets. It was a solid mass of people. She hesitated, but then shoved her thoughts to the back of her mind. She was about to do something terrible, even worse than the strafing run, but t was either this or her friends' lives. She waited, then pressed the bomb release. Beneath the A-10, four silver bombs fell away from the aircraft and began to tumble end over end. Nora hauled the stick into her lap and climbed.

Napalm had been developed during World War II for use against enemy bunkers, but it had gradually been restricted since the Korean War: there was always the chance that a pilot would miss their target and drop it on friendly troops or civilians. Nations still kept it on hand, since it was useful against ground GRIMM, but even then it was a weapon of last resort, just one step short of fuel-air bombs. Nora had nursed a nightmare that her friends were being overrun by Boarbatusks or Goliaths, so she had convinced the Iranian weapons loaders to load her A-10 with napalm canisters.

Against unarmored human beings in the open, napalm was something out of hell itself: the canisters split when they hit the ground, and the jellied gasoline ignited on contact with the air. Flames shot forward, scorching anything it touched, sticking to any surface. The lucky ones died in seconds, the flames snuffing out their lives with the oxygen in the air; most were not lucky and burned alive, screaming. Those in the rear rank who survived turned and fled, all interest in the base and potential victims gone.

Even at the distance they were at, Ruby Flight felt the heat. None of them turned to look; the screams were enough to tell them they did not need to. They reached their aircraft; Oscar grabbed the ladder and put it against the F-16, waiting for Ruby and Maria. The two came running out of the tower—or rather, Ruby did; she had thrown the protesting, swearing old woman over her shoulder and run down the steps, adrenaline giving her strength she didn't know she had. She set Maria down, then unslung the Moisin. There was no room for it in the F-16. Ruby sighed, set it against the tower, threw it a brief salute, and followed Maria to _Crescent Rose._

Yang helped Blake to the F-14; adrenaline had helped Blake recover, and she was moving under her own power by the time they reached the Tomcat. "Can you fly?" Yang asked.

"I'll damn well fly out of here!" Blake yelled. Her hearing was starting to come back.

"Up you go, jarhead!" Yang helped boost Blake into the cockpit, getting both hands under her rear. She waited until Blake somehow got herself turned around. Luckily they'd left their helmets in the aircraft. Blake threw her a thumbs-up, strapped in, put on her helmet, and switched on her oxygen. The cool air helped clear the remaining cobwebs and she pulled on her mask. There was no time for a preflight: she started the engines and watched Yang climb into the F-23: luckily the Black Widow was low enough to the ground that Yang didn't need a ladder. Oscar was the last to get into his aircraft: he pushed the ladder to the tarmac. Orbiting above them was Nora, now joined by Pyrrha and Ren.

Somehow, despite not using the radio in their haste to get away from Darvaza, Ruby Flight plus two got sorted out into a line, with Qrow the first to take off, JINN bouncing around on his lap. Ruby held back until her flight was in the air, then took off last, leaving the horror that was Darvaza behind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I was watching the Apathy episodes the first time, the diary entries reminded me a lot of LOTR, so I had to throw that in. Turns out I'm not the only one to think that; the Sirs and Madam reviewers on YouTube thought the same thing.
> 
> So why was everyone so irritable and tired despite there being no actual Apathy in this story? What happened to Darvaza and Bartleby? Why are the locals cannibals? Why does Ruby's silver eyes turn her into a stone-cold killer sniper? Well, that will have to wait until next time...this chapter's huge enough.


	11. Temptations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ruby Flight has survived Darvaza, but now they have to pick up the pieces...which means a lot of talking, and a lot of decisions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One of these days I'll write shorter chapters. Really. I will.
> 
> This chapter blew up on me, to be honest. I had it mapped out: talk about what happened at Darvaza, Blake and Yang have a talk, Oscar and Ruby have a moment of some kind-something short and sweet-and Qrow and Pyrrha have a talk about Qrow's actions. Then catch up with Salem a bit. Boom, done. But then Oscar and Ruby decided to grab the story and run with it, and next thing you know, it's another 5000+ word chapter.
> 
> The use of fentanyl might give people with medical backgrounds headaches, but I took the story from the Moscow Theater Massacre of 2002, when Chechen rebels seized a Moscow theater. Russian special forces pumped some sort of gas into the theater to knock everyone out, but something went wrong, and several dozen people ended up dying of it. The Russian government at first claimed it was a fentanyl derivative, but it is now thought to be something much, much stronger. I went with the former, since otherwise Ruby Flight would be dead. I don't know if it's accurate, but sometimes you just have to chant the MST3K Mantra...
> 
> The part that alcoholics are actually resistant to sedatives I got from TVTropes.

_Tehran Military Hospital_

_Tehran, Monarchial Republic of Iran_

_27 July 2001_

Ruby Rose slowly came awake, but instead of the hard floor of the Darvaza lounge beneath her back, it was something warm and soft, and instead of an old window there was the stark white ceiling and the antiseptic smell of a hospital. _Where the hell am I?_ she thought, then remembered.

The flight from Darvaza to Tehran had been a tough one, but they'd made it. The combination of oxygen and adrenaline did a lot to clear the fatigue from their systems, but by the time they'd made it to Tehran, the adrenaline had worn off and it was all Ruby Flight could do to land safely. Ruby had been so exhausted that for a second she had thought about asking Maria to land, before remembering that the older woman was practically blind. The approach through the mountains was indeed as hair-raising as predicted, though the weather was indeed clear and beautiful. Ruby remembered landing at Tehran Mehrabad, but barely remembered being helped from the cockpit, and nothing afterwards.

"Hey there, pipsqueak." Ruby looked over at Qrow, who sat in his typical sprawl. He was wearing what was obviously borrowed clothes; they hung over his lanky frame like a tent. "How are you feeling?"

Ruby took stock. There was a mild pain in her right arm; she looked and saw she had an IV going. She lifted the blankets and saw she was wearing a hospital smock, but thankfully there were no other tubes going into places she didn't want to think about, like the last time she had woken up in a hospital. "A little weird, I guess…but I guess I'm okay. Is everyone else okay?"

"Yep. They're in the other rooms. If they haven't woken up, they will soon." He reached out and took her hand. "You're going to be fine. Just exhausted, that's all."

"A little more than that, I'm afraid." They looked over as a older man in a doctor's smock walked into the room. He put out a hand to Ruby. "Doctor Mahmoud Kia." He smiled as they shook hands. "Sorry if that sounded a little ominous. You're going to be fine, Captain Rose. So will the rest of your unit." He gazed over the tops of his glasses at Qrow. "Including you, Major Branwen."

Ruby sat up a bit. "That's good," she told the doctor. "What happened?"

He flipped through some papers. "Major Branwen informed us of the details of what happened at…Darvaza, was it?" He checked the papers. "Yes, Darvaza. You're very lucky to be alive, Captain."

"How so?"

"You passed out right after they loaded you into an ambulance at the airport. So did everyone but Major Branwen and Colonel Calavera—and she fell unconscious after you arrived here. Don't worry; she'll be fine as well." He showed Ruby a paper covered in numbers, which might as well have been the Enigma code for all she could make out. "Toxicology report. You have trace amounts of fentanyl in your system." At her puzzled expression, Kia added, "Fentanyl is part of the same anaesthetic we use to put people under for surgery; it's an opoid. Everyone in your unit has that same trace to one extent or another."

"I don't get it," Ruby admitted.

"We were being drugged," Qrow explained. "Someone was pumping that stuff into the air in the lounge. Probably the same thing happened in every one of the buildings we saw."

"The bodies we found." Ruby _did_ get it now, and she felt her knees begin to shake. "They went to sleep…and never woke up."

"Yep. The villagers probably had something set up for everyone who landed there. Darvaza is like a giant Venus flytrap, and we were the flies." Qrow's hand went reflexively towards a pocket, where normally his flask would be, but stopped halfway there.

"So why didn't we end up the same way? And how come it affected everyone differently?" Ruby shrugged. "I mean, I woke up…"

"Fentanyl _can_ affect everyone differently," Kia told her. "Some people need just a little to be knocked cold for hours. I've had patients who took an hour to go under—and that's at much higher concentrations than your people got, and we mix other drugs in with it. You might not have gotten that much in your system." He consulted his notes. "Captain Schnee had the highest dose, followed by Captain Xiao Long. Depending on how the gas was introduced to the environment, it might have been as simple as they were closest to the vent or pipe, and you were furthest away."

Ruby twisted the covers in her hands. Being eaten by crazed villagers was _not_ how she envisioned herself dying. "How soon can we get back to flying?"

Kia smiled. "That's the good news. Nearly all of the fentanyl has gotten out of your system by now. Your exhaustion wasn't just the drug; it was also a lack of sleep and a great deal of stress." He motioned to the IV. "That's just saline now, to keep you hydrated. We'll get that unhooked, have you sign far too much paperwork, and you'll be released within an hour or two. We are going to keep Colonel Calavera here overnight; a woman her age could suffer a relapse, though she doesn't seem to have gotten a very high dose. I suspect my government is putting your unit up in a hotel." He shrugged. "I wish I could give you a warmer welcome to Iran, Captain Rose. You're not seeing us at our best, I'm afraid."

"Doc, I'm just happy not to be someone's lunch." Ruby shook hands with him again. His smile widened; he nodded and left. Ruby sank back into the pillows. "So let me get this straight, Uncle Qrow. The locals were cannibals, and they slowly leaked this gas into the barracks. We fall asleep, they come in and shoot us in the head, then freeze us like TV dinners and munch on us later."

"That's about the size of it," Qrow replied. "They were probably coming to get us when we surprised them by being up and around. Since Weiss got the worst of it, that explains why she was so groggy and bitchy this morning."

Ruby snickered. "Actually, I think Weiss is just bitchy anyway." She rubbed her eyes and stretched as best she could. "How come you're up and around?"

Qrow didn't reply at first. "I…the fentanyl didn't affect me all that much."

"But you were out cold." Ruby wanted to believe it was the gas.

He got up and walked towards the door. "I was out cold because I was stone drunk, Ruby. The fentanyl didn't affect me as much because sedatives don't tend to work on alcoholics as well as regular folk." He didn't meet her eyes. "We'll talk about that later, pipsqueak. Glad to see you're okay."

* * *

_Tehran Grand Hotel_

_Tehran, Monarchial Republic of Iran_

_27 July 2001_

Blake nearly jumped out of her bed when she heard someone banging on her hotel room door. "Come in, Yang," she called out, then realized her door was locked. She growled to herself, set aside Bartleby's diary, and opened the door.

Yang gave her a lopsided grin and held up two sodas. "Want some company?"

"Um…sure." Blake let her in.

"How did you know it was me?"

"Metal on wood."

"Oh." Yang sat on the bed, and handed Blake one of the sodas when the Faunus got under the covers. "I thought about some beer, but after what happened in Spookytown…"

"Yeah." Truth to tell, Blake thought she could use a stiff drink, or maybe four, but all of them weren't going to forget Qrow's monumental lapse of judgement anytime soon.

It was uncomfortably silent for a long few minutes, then Yang asked, "So whatcha reading?" Then she saw, and recoiled like there was a snake in Blake's bed. "God, Blake. You should burn that damn thing."

"Don't think I wasn't tempted when Maria gave it to me," Blake replied. "But Bartleby probably has a family somewhere. This might give them some closure. We never did find his body."

"Probably because they ate the poor bastard." Yang shuddered.

"Poor bastard is right." Blake ran her fingers over the cover. "It's worse than we thought, Yang. He figured out what the villagers were doing, but they forced him to keep operating the base. They told him if he didn't, they would cook him…while he was still alive. They kept a sniper up in the tower, by the radios. If there was just a single aircraft with one pilot, they shot the pilot. If there was more, they let Bartleby put them in the barracks, then dosed them with fentanyl, like they tried to do with us. Eventually the poor man just went mad. Those corpses we found, the ones in the beds? He was taking care of them, as if they were just sick instead of dead. The villagers let him, for some reason. I think they killed him, though. That last entry…I think that was when they finally came for him." Blake picked up the diary, shut it, and set it aside. "There's a few more entries I haven't read, but that's definitely enough for tonight."

"Enough fucking period," Yang observed. "I'm not going to sleep worth a shit as it is." She cracked open the soda. "What happened to the planes that landed there?"

"He didn't say. Probably buried somewhere." Blake opened her soda as well. "Like you said, enough." She took a drink, knowing it wasn't the only thing Yang wanted to talk about; she felt the same way. "Uh…Yang?"

Yang stared into space. "Yeah, Blake. I'm here to apologize. I said some shitty things at that place." She let out a long breath. "Especially what I said when we were in the cellar. That was way out of line. Ordering you around like that, like I was…like I was fucking Adam or something."

Blake took a drink and set aside the soda, then drew up her knees to her chin. "Yang, it's okay. That gas was making us all loopy."

"It's not okay. We settled all this bullshit in Japan. We're friends. Period. And I fucked that up."

"You weren't the only one," Blake said. "I seem to be planting my foot firmly in my mouth lately. Back in Almaty, I told you that you were thinking with your heart instead of your head—right after I said you didn't understand what people would do for love. Then I told you I'd protect you at Darvaza." Blake shook her head. "Right after I talked about how Adam would gaslight and patronize me. So if you want to see someone who fucked up, check me out. I'm nothing but a damn hypocrite."

Yang chuckled sadly. "The funny part is, you're kinda right." She took a long drink. "Thing is, Blake, I don't know what it's like to love someone like you loved Adam or Ozpin loved Salem. Never had a steady boyfriend. Oh sure, I've slept with a few guys here and there—one-night stands. You know, some dude's good looking, we have a couple of drinks, and I decide I need to get that itch scratched. Never came away unsatisfied, so it's all good, but I've never really…y'know…loved someone. Like a husband or even a steady lover." She finished the soda. "So you're right there. Maybe I'd do something dumb for love too. Not start a nuclear war, maybe, but…" Yang crushed the can and tossed it into the garbage.

"I could've worded it better," Blake said quietly.

"Yeah, maybe. But me too." Yang looked at her and smiled. "So…friends?"

Blake nodded. "Always, Yang. Thank you. I think I'll sleep better tonight."

"Yeah, me too." Yang leaned back on the bed, scratching her stomach. While Blake had packed her yukata in her travel pod—amazingly, none of the pods had been lost through a dogfight, a storm, and attack by cannibals—but Yang just wore a yellow T-shirt and shorts. "Too bad Tehran doesn't have much of a nightlife these days. I think I could use that itch scratched."

Blake giggled. "You're not alone. Where's Sun when you need him?"

Yang exploded into laughter. "Oh my God, Blake! Are you saying you want a _threesome?"_

"Hell no!" Blake grabbed a pillow and hit Yang in the face. "I'm selfish. Find your _own_ well-hung Faunus boy."

Yang tossed the pillow back. "Take me to Menagerie and I just might." She laughed so hard she kicked her feet in the air, then wiped her eyes. "Damn, Blake. I needed that laugh."

"Me too."

Yang held out her arms. "Hug?"

"Of course." The two of them hugged. Blake squeezed tight, needing to feel the warmth of a friend, someone that was alive after they'd come so close to death. When the mortar had deafened her and nearly knocked her out, she dimly remembered not really caring. It had been so tempting to simply lie there and let whatever was coming next happen, even if it meant her own death. _No more problems,_ she thought, and hugged Yang a bit harder. There had been many times Blake Belladonna had considered ending her own life, but always she'd pulled herself back into life, no matter how harsh or depressing. It felt good to know that now she had friends to help with the pulling.

Then she rolled her eyes. "Yang…why are you grabbing my ass?"

"Because it's there."

Blake let go. It was good to see that maddening, self-confident grin on her friend's face. "For someone who says they're not a lesbian, you sure seem to have some other-team tendencies."

Yang shrugged. "Meh. I love everybody." She put on a look of deep thought. "Maybe I'm omnisexual."

"Still not a word." She pushed Yang playfully. "Okay, Yang. I'm going to go to bed and think some very heterosexual thoughts."

Yang got up. "Well, I wouldn't want to interrupt that." She walked towards the door, stopped, and rotated her butt in Blake's direction, then smacked it. Blake raised an eyebrow, though she was clearly fighting back laughter. With one last twerk, Yang sauntered out.

* * *

Oscar was also reading, though it was a sci-fi novel he'd found at the hotel mini-mart. It wasn't holding his interest, mainly because he was thinking the same thing everyone at Darvaza: how close they had come to death. Oscar felt fairly confident in the air nowadays, but he'd never fired a gun in anger; his experience with firearms came from basic training and shooting squirrels with his mother's .22 back on the farm. At Darvaza, he'd felt like one of the squirrels.

The hotel phone rang. He stared at it, then picked it up. "Room 69."

"Oscar? It's Ruby. Can I…would you mind if I came over?"

"Uh, sure! I'll unlock the door."

"Thanks." She hung up.

Oscar tossed aside the book and hopped out of bed, looked down at himself, and wished he was wearing something besides shorts and a loud T-shirt with PENSACOLA in bright orange letters. Then he thought he heard someone at the door, and rushed over to fling it open with such force that Ruby actually jumped. He stared at her. She was dressed in pajamas of sorts—a black tank top with a head-on shot of a red F-16, and white bottoms with hearts all over them. There was a pillow and a comforter under her arms. "Hey," she said.

"Er, hey!" he returned. "What's up?"

"Can I sleep with you tonight?" She winced. "I mean, can I sleep in the same bed with you tonight? Er…can I…oh hell." Ruby looked very sheepish. "No way in hell I can sleep alone tonight." She blushed. "I know…it's like I'm five years old and I had a bad dream…"

"Uh, no! No!" Oscar insisted. "Come on in!" He stuck his head in the hallway, but it was empty. The thought had occurred to him since Japan and Almaty that Captain Yang Xiao Long, USAF, might not like it if she even _thought_ he was sleeping with her little sister. Such events might anger said Captain Yang Xiao Long, with lethal results for Ensign Oscar Pine, USN. He closed the door in a hurry, and would never know that another five seconds would have meant Yang would have seen her sister going into Oscar's room, as the older sister came out of Blake's.

Ruby tossed the comforter on the floor. The Grand Hotel was a fairly nice place in downtown Tehran, enough that the carpet was thick and clean. "Thanks, Oscar. I tried to fall asleep, and damn near jumped through the ceiling when the heater cut on."

"Yeah. I've been trying to read until I fall asleep." He held up the book.

" _Snowbird Chained?"_ Ruby nodded. "You're starting in the middle of the series."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah! _Snowbird Ascendant_ is the first one. Not as good as the others, though…takes the author a few stories to find his stride." She fluffed the pillow and knelt. "Well, you can leave the light on. I don't mind. In fact, it might help."

"Ruby, I'll take the floor. You sleep in the bed."

"It's okay! I'm used to roughing it."

"Hey, it's the least I can do for the woman who saved my life."

Ruby looked at her feet. "I…it wasn't like that."

"Yeah, it was. If you hadn't woke up…" Oscar didn't even want to think about it. There was a lot of things he didn't want to think about lately. In the last 48 hours, he'd found out his father had started World War III, that he was an accident from a man on the rebound from the woman now trying to destroy the world, and he'd nearly become a literal snack. It was a lot to take in.

He caught himself staring at Ruby. Most of the time, he saw her in uniform or a flight suit, neither of which really flattered her figure. Unlike her sister's rather endowed proportions, Ruby was rather small breasted, but the pajama bottoms hugged her nicely, leaving the outline of a pert bottom and slender legs. He quickly put his hands in front of himself. Then he noticed something else: Ruby was staring right back at him, with those depthless silver eyes. There was no way she hadn't missed what she was doing to him.

For her part, Ruby felt her heart beginning to pound. She'd never been this close to a man she wasn't related to, much less someone who was clearly getting rather excited at her. Ruby didn't know what to do. She'd always compared herself to Yang, who was a blonde knockout; the other girls of Ruby Flight were no different. She didn't have Blake's exotic Faunus beauty, or Weiss' regal bearing and flawless skin. In fact, Ruby regarded herself as rather plain, maybe cute but nothing more, and she was neither exotic, regal, nor flawless; in fact, Ruby was fairly certain there was a zit on her forehead under the fall of her short hair, and a bruise on her shoulder from the Moisin. And yet, here she was, turning on a guy. Worse, he was having the same effect on her: unlike Oscar, who could only fantasize, Ruby knew _exactly_ what he looked like naked.

She stood, her mind telling her that she needed to say this was a bad idea and leave, but instead, she found herself getting closer to Oscar. The kiss seemed to take forever, but when their lips finally locked, it sent electric shockwaves to her toes. Their hands came up of their own volition, grabbing at cloth and backs, and both jumped as their tongues met. They felt themselves floating down to the bed, and pressing into each other. But when she felt Oscar's hands getting rather bold under her tank top, Ruby suddenly pushed him back and sat up. "We've got to stop, Oscar," she said, on the verge of tears. "I'm sorry, but we've got to stop."

Oscar went from bliss to horrible embarassment in the space of a second. "Oh, shit." He sat up too, putting his face in his hands. "I'm the one who's sorry. Dammit, I'm sorry, Ruby. I shouldn't…shit, you're my superior officer…it's just…" Oscar decided to hell with it; he was already in enough trouble, so he might as well tell the truth. "You're just…you're beautiful."

If it was possible to turn any redder, Ruby did. No one had ever called her beautiful except her father, and this was in entirely different circumstances. She reached out and put a hand on his back. "I want to, Oscar," she said in a small voice. "But…I can't. I don't know why, but it's—"

"—it's a bad idea," Oscar finished. "Not here, not right now. I mean, I didn't even bring protection or anything."

Ruby hung her head. "I'm just such an idiot."

"I'm the bigger idiot. I started this."

She couldn't help but smile. "You know, I've _never_ done that to a guy." She laughed a little. "Kinda flattering, actually."

"You mean kissed?"

"That too, but…well…" She pointed at his groin.

Oscar groaned. "I…I couldn't help it…"

"It's cool. Really, it is." She watched him, and wanted to kiss him more than anything else in the world. She also knew that if she _did_ kiss him, this time they wouldn't stop. And she found that scared her almost as much as being eaten by cannibals. "I'm so sorry, Oscar. You probably think I'm a tease."

"No, not at all!" Oscar insisted. "You're right. It's not a good idea right now." His body screamed otherwise.

So did Ruby's, but she knew she could not do this. When it came down to it, she still didn't know him all that well. "Yeah." She sounded far from convinced.

"We're both just scared, because of what happened this morning," Oscar said. "Kind of like a…rebound…" He was silent for a moment. "So _that's_ what happened with Mom and Ozpin." He could not call Ozpin Dad or Father. The words just weren't there, just like Ozpin hadn't been there. "So that's what that feels like."

Ruby cursed under her breath, then reluctantly got to her feet. Part of her very much wanted to strip off her top and just go for it—it was what Yang would do—but she couldn't. She was, simply, too scared-not of the act itself, necessarily, but what it could lead to. "I'm going to go back to my room. I…I think I'd better."

"Yeah. You going to be okay?"

Ruby sighed. "Yeah. I think so." She gently touched his face, once more fighting back the desire. "You're a good dude, Oscar. I wish…I wish we…"

He touched her hands, and dared greatly by kissing both of them. "You're a beautiful person, Ruby. I do too. Maybe someday."

"I won't tease you," she told him.

"I know."

Ruby quickly gathered up her stuff and left, with one last melancholy look back. She cursed herself all the way back to her room. "Gonna need a cold shower," she grumbled. At least she wasn't going to be thinking about Darvaza now.

In Oscar's room, he was thinking exactly the same thing.

* * *

Pyrrha Nikos was not in her room. She was sitting in the hotel's business center, a map spread out in front of her, jotting notes on a pad. She heard the door open and quickly folded the map into a folder, then saw it was Qrow. "Oh. Hello."

"What's up." He crossed over to where a coffeemaker hummed and poured a cup. "Hmm. Not bad."

"Persian coffee." Pyrrha took a sip herself and sat back. "Can't sleep?"

"Don't think anyone can."

"Ren and Nora can, but they have…well." Pyrrha smiled. "You know."

He sat down across from her. "Pyrrha, listen. I need to talk to you." He glanced at the door; it was closed. "I screwed up last night. Bad."

"I don't need to know, Major—"

"Yeah, you do. Because you're the next highest ranking officer after me. Maria's retired, so she's not in the chain of command." Qrow stared at the coffee. "Pyrrha…I should probably be court-martialed."

Her eyes widened. "It's not as bad as all that, surely."

"It is. I got drunk. I was supposed to be on watch. Oscar woke me up for my shift. As soon as he went to bed…I tried, sort of. But I got into the base booze stash at the barracks. Had a lot of good stuff. Ruby and Weiss tried to keep it quiet about the stash, but I went exploring while they were getting some blankets after we fueled the birds. I got so drunk I passed out. Ruby was the one who saved our asses this morning, not me. In fact, I lay there like a piece of shit until the shooting started." He smashed a fist into the table, causing Pyrrha to jump. "Dammit! I _knew_ better, Pyrrha! I _knew!_ And I did it anyway because I needed to. Ever since…" Qrow realized that Pyrrha didn't know about JINN's knowledge yet. He decided not to tell her; it probably didn't matter anyway. "Let's just say since my own damn sister tried to kill us all, it's been tough keeping it together. I guess it just…shit."

Pyrrha was silent for a moment. "You got drunk the night before last too, didn't you? That was why Ruby Flight was late taking off."

Qrow ran a finger around the rim of the coffee cup. "Yep."

"Major—Qrow," she amended, "there's no easy way to say this, but…I think you're an—"

"—alcoholic," he finished, with a wry smile. "Yep again. I've been one for a long time." _Since Summer disappeared,_ he wanted to say, but that was not a secret he felt like sharing. "Functioning alcoholic, true. I can fly and fight with the best of 'em. And I don't drink in the air. On the ground…" He spread his hands. "Hell, Pyrrha. Let's be honest. If it wasn't for Ozpin, they'd have bounced me out of the Air Force a long time ago."

Pyrrha rubbed her temples. Most fighter pilots drank, herself included; she was no slouch when it came to drinking. She sort of remembered the night she'd gotten horribly drunk—and sick—on ouzo, when Jaune had found her. Most pilots, however, might tie one on now and then, but were not alcoholics. Qrow wasn't the first one she'd known, however. "If your drinking has gotten to the point of it endangering the lives of this command, then yes, it's grounds for a court-martial. If you drank and passed out while on designated watch in a war zone, you could be shot. I mean, I don't think they'd do that, but still—it's definitely grounds."

"It is," Qrow agreed. "And I'd plead guilty. I'd get cashiered, maybe even get some jail time. My career would be over." He shrugged. "Maybe it should be. I've never done anything like that. Maybe I've lost it." He drank about half the coffee. "You're next in line for overall command, Pyrrha. You want to bring me up on charges when we get to Incirlik, I am totally okay with that." He paused. "Well…actually I'm _not_ totally okay with it, but I damn sure deserve it."

"Maybe I don't want to bring you up on charges," Pyrrha said harshly. "Maybe you should take some damned responsibility and turn yourself in."

Qrow stared at her for a second, then slowly nodded. "Yeah. You're right."

Pyrrha opened the folder and began looking at the map again, mainly because she couldn't look at Qrow. She was angry, but she wasn't sure if she was angry at him for being a drunk, or angry at herself because that could just as easily be her. She didn't have a drinking problem—yet. But there had been many times since Beacon, when the loneliness and the self-loathing had gotten to the point where the bottle was very tempting. She heard him begin to get up, and said, without looking up, "Qrow, forgive me for prying, but…did you lose someone really close to you? Is that what started this?"

Qrow sat back down. "Yeah," he said finally. "Ruby's mom. We were close." Pyrrha went pale as a sudden thought came to her. Her head jerked up and Qrow actually laughed, waving a hand. "No, no…I know what you're thinking: Taiyang's got blonde hair and Ruby's got dark hair. Nothing like that. I'm not actually Ruby's father. Geez." He laughed again. "That would be weird. Nah, she looks just like her mother, Summer Rose.

"I won't deny it," he said, half to himself. "There were a lot of times I thought about asking Short Stack out, even taking her to bed. We weren't related, after all—technically, we're still not. I'm not really Ruby's uncle by blood; I'm Yang's. But she was always in love with Taiyang, and dammit, I was _not_ going to come between them. Even when Tai was married to Raven, Summer still carried a torch for him. I might be a drunk piece of shit, but I wasn't going to take advantage of my friends, either of them. And when Raven ran off, Summer and Tai ended up together, like it always should've been, really. Tai was too good of a friend for a guy who doesn't have a lot of them; no way in hell I was going to move in on Summer, even when she wasn't married. But when Summer disappeared…I'd always liked to drink, but I never _needed_ to." The words came pouring out: they'd been saved up for awhile. Qrow felt better for saying them.

Pyrrha didn't answer at first. She ran her fingers over the map. _There but for the grace of God go I,_ she thought. She could easily become Qrow Branwen. He'd lost Summer, she'd lost Jaune. But whereas she'd only had Jaune for a few weeks, Qrow had been friends with Summer for over a decade. They'd flown and fought together far longer than she had with Jaune. "Qrow," she finally said, "how long have you been flying combat? If you can tell me."

"No big secret. Let's see…1977, at least."

"Have you taken any breaks? Long ones?"

"I take leave every now and then. Go see Tai and the kids, when they were all in Patch."

"But no long term breaks. Easy duty, like training or desk duty."

"Fuck no. Boring as hell. I used to train down at Signal, but only between missions for Ozpin."

Pyrrha nodded slowly. "So you've basically been on extended operations for the past twenty-four years."

Qrow gave that some thought. "Yeah, guess so."

"My God." Pyrrha wondered how Qrow hadn't completely cracked up. High stress job, for _years_ on end? No one could take that, not even adrenaline junkies like so many fighter pilots were. Qrow had seen things Pyrrha couldn't even dream of. She took a sip of her coffee, and closed the folder, then put away her notes. "Major, with respect…go to bed."

"Huh?" Qrow wasn't sure what that meant.

"I'm not going to bring you up on charges, Qrow. You should be, yes. But you need rest, not jail. When we get to Europe—if we get to Europe—I'm going to get General Ironwood to put you on leave for a few months."

"What the hell am I supposed to do with a few months?"

"I don't know. Go see the castles. Cruise the Rhine. Hook up with Weiss' sister that we're not supposed to know about." At his startled look, Pyrrha chuckled. "Weiss doesn't know—at least I don't think she does. But I think everyone else has figured it out. Anyway, get some actual _rest._ And for God's sake, and your nieces, and mine… _stop drinking."_

Qrow got up. "Fair enough," he said at length. "No court-martial."

"Not unless you decide to turn yourself in. But I think that would be a waste of potential."

He sniffed. "Now you're starting to sound like Ozpin."

"Someone has to."

He threw the coffee cup in the trash and nodded at the folder. "That where we're going?"

She smiled. "Algeria _is_ pretty this time of year."


	12. I Know You're Out There Somewhere

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cinder, Adam and Neo get a message from Lil' Miss, telling them where Ruby Flight may be going.
> 
> It's up to them to figure out where, exactly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After some long chapters, this one's pretty short, and is another Bad Guy chapter. We need to get caught up with Salem and Cinder.

_Darvaza Airfield_

_Near Darvaza, Turkmenistan_

_28 July 2001_

"Is this safe?" Emerald Sustrai asked with concern, as she stepped out of the Antonov An-12. The transport was nearly twice her age, but that wasn't what concerned her.

"Why wouldn't it be?" Salem stepped out behind her, the wind ruffling her white hair. She put on sunglasses, but otherwise gave no sign that the sunlight was a bother. Emerald had half expected her to burst into flames.

"No, Miss Salem, I just meant…"

Salem smiled at her. "My dear Emerald, I appreciate the concern for my well-being—or at least your meal ticket—but contrary to popular belief, I do not sit in Mount Yamantau like a modern-day Baba Yaga in her hut. I _do_ occasionally leave…when something needs my personal attention." She walked towards the tower as several guards fanned out; above them, twenty GRIMM orbited. Behind her was Tyrian Callows and Mercury Black. "I admit I would've sent Cinder or Hazel in the past, but she's not exactly available, and Hazel—"

"—is on your shit list," Mercury finished.

Tyrian scowled at him, but Salem laughed. "An impertient answer, Mr. Black, but accurate nonetheless."

They walked past the tower; Tyrian noticed the Moisin-Nagant, still leaning against the side, and picked it up. Once they reached the half-collapsed barracks, they saw the bodies. Emerald's stomach gave a nasty heave. The smell of roasted flesh still hung in the air. " _Madre di Dios,_ " she whispered.

"Napalm," Salem said casually. "Someone was not fooling about." She waved them around the barracks. Mercury stopped, bent down, and picked up a few shell casings. "Nine millimeter. Beretta. Whoever was here, they were Americans—this is standard issue."

"Mistress Salem!" one of the guards shouted, pointing. "People, coming from the village."

"Lower your weapons," she ordered. "They mean us no harm." She stepped out in front of her guards, who lowered their assault rifles, but kept them at the ready. There were about a dozen of the villagers, none younger than fifty. An ancient man slightly increased his pace and while the others stopped, walked to Salem. Emerald noticed his hands were shaking. He began speaking in a language she didn't recognize, and tears began to stream down his face. Salem nodded and replied in the same language, then the old man fell to his knees, weeping. She knelt and put his head on her shoulder. Mercury opened his mouth, but a glare from Tyrian made him close it; there was only so much he could get away with, with the psychotic Faunus standing there. He watched the scorpion tail swishing in impatience, and sincerely wished he could put a bullet in the back of Tyrian's head.

Finally, the old man straightened up, as did Salem. She spoke a few words to him; he kissed her hand and drew back a respectful distance, to the others. The pale woman turned to her entourage. "These are the people of Darvaza village—what remains of them. They are essentially bandits, ambushing travelers who wander into this area. About a year or so ago, the Royal Air Force reopened Darvaza airfield to act as a waystation for NATO and RAF aircraft flying to and from Europe to Hong Kong and China. With my help and instruction, the people simply turned their banditry towards the base, taking the commander hostage. They would ambush and kill anyone who landed here, and the aircraft would join my, shall we say, collection." Salem nodded at Emerald. "The aircraft you were flying at Beacon and elsewhere usually originated here."

"What happened to the pilots?" Mercury asked.

"They ate them," Tyrian cackled, pointing to the villagers. "The perfect crime!"

Salem silenced him with a glance. "It seems that, purely by accident, Ruby Flight were forced to divert here two days ago. Like they did with the others, the villagers began pumping an anaesthetic gas into the barracks to put them to sleep, then arrived the next morning to kill them. However, either the gas failed to work or it didn't work well enough, and Ruby Flight escaped by shooting their way out." She turned to the old man and asked a few questions. The elder made movements with his arm, and described what was obviously an aircraft. Then he made a sound like a belch.

Even Emerald got that one. "They got strafed by an A-10. That means that Nora Valkyrie girl was here."

"She was the one who dropped the napalm, then. Most of the young people of the village died; only the old and the children remain." Salem sighed. "How odd that Ruby Flight seems always to be a pain in my ass. In any case, the operation here is over." She stepped forward and raised her arms and voice, speaking in the same language she had earlier; Emerald thought it sounded vaguely like Turkish, so it stood to reason that she was speaking in Turkmen, the local dialect. She wondered just how many languages Salem spoke: when she addressed Emerald and Mercury, she had spoken English without accent, and naturally spoke Russian to her guards and personnel at Mount Yamantau. The people went to one knee when she was finished, bowed their heads, and said a single word, in Russian: _"Czarina!"_ Then they stood and began to hurry back to the village.

Salem motioned one of her guards forward. "There should be a truck or two parked around the base. Find it and take it to Darvaza village. We'll be taking these people back with us." He nodded, twirled a finger, and three other men broke off and followed him.

Next, she motioned at Emerald. When the former thief came up to her, she led her a few paces out of earshot. "Emerald, I assume you still know certain things about the criminal underworld."

"Not as much as Torchwick, but yes." Emerald noticed that Salem now addressed her in Spanish.

"Good. Can you contact the Malachite Gang? I have my own ways of doing so, but this needs to be done slightly more discreetly than normal. I must assume the CIA has their own contacts at Vladivostok."

"Sure." Emerald had met Lil' Miss once, and that was once too often, but there were plenty of ways to communicate, if one knew them.

"Excellent. When we return to Mount Yamantau, I want you to tell her Ruby Flight was here. According to the village elder, they flew south, so we can assume they rejoined the rest of their people, possibly at Ashgabat or Tehran. They won't be able to enter Europe, thanks to the embargo, but they are a resourceful bunch—they will find a way. Pass that on as well."

"Of course," Emerald answered. "But I don't understand why."

She didn't expect Salem to answer, but the older woman did. "Because, Emerald, Lil' Miss will tell Cinder, and she and Neo Politan will head off in pursuit. Their hatred for Ruby Rose will lead them to a partnership, if it hasn't already, and they will be useful to harass and harry our opponents." Salem tapped a finger against her chin. "It might be worth it to notify the White Fang, what's left of them…draw Adam Taurus out of hiding. His obsession with Blake Belladonna could prove useful as well." She put a pale hand on the thief's shoulder. "We'll see if Cinder can redeem herself, yes?"

Emerald nodded. "Of course," she repeated.

"Thank you, Emerald." She dismissed her, and Emerald walked away, obviously glad to be helping Cinder. Salem found herself liking the young woman, and wondered what was going on between her and Cinder Fall. Some sort of displaced redemption from Cinder, to rescue a girl from what had been her own fate? Emerald desperate for a friend, any friend? Were the two lovers? Salem gave a mental shrug; it didn't matter.

She stood on the runway for a long while, the wind whipping her black cloak behind her. Her guards found an ancient Zil truck and were using it to transport to older people, while the younger ones walked; all of them carried what little possessions they had. Salem had carefully cultivated hundreds of villages like Darvaza, to provide her intelligence, raw materials, or anything else she needed, but now that Darvaza Airfield was no longer useful, she would take the survivors back to Yamantau. The younger ones would go to work in the GRIMM factories; the elders would find other work, and be taken care of. Salem knew that mistreating her workers was the quickest way to revolution, so she fed them well, sheltered them, and in return only asked for their work and absolute loyalty. This they did, in abundance; it never ceased to amaze Salem how much people were willing to sacrifice for security and safety.

"The hearts of men are so easily swayed," Salem whispered, and smiled.

* * *

_Gems Hotel_

_Beirut, Republic of Lebanon_

_29 July 2001_

Cinder Fall looked out over Beirut Harbor from her fifth floor window. The sun was beginning to set over the ocean, bathing the clouds in the sky red. She figured it was appropriate. She heard the knock at her door, crossed the hotel room, and opened it to admit Adam Taurus and Neo Politan. "Good evening." She couldn't see his eyes through the mask, but she was sure the good one was wide. "What are you wearing?"

Cinder laughed as even Neo nodded in appreciation. "I told you I'd found a job running baccarat in the hotel casino."

"Which wasn't necessary," Adam said as he walked into the room. "I would have provided the funds for your room."

"I'm no one's kept woman," Cinder retorted. "I won't accept charity. Besides, I rather enjoy the job." Which was true, she reflected. When they'd arrived in Beirut three weeks previously, Adam had quickly contacted the local White Fang chapter, which was still intact and loyal. Whereas Lil' Miss Malachite had provided free storage of their three aircraft—Adam's Moonslice, Neo's Hawk, and Cinder's F-86, which Lil' Miss let her keep out of pure amusement—they had to provide for themselves otherwise. Adam had paid for his own hotel room and Cinder's, but she resented someone taking care of her; there were too many bad memories there. She had walked into the Gems Hotel's management office and gotten a job on the spot: Cinder spoke English and French, and her figure had done the rest. She hid her facial scars behind a cloth mask, which the players found mysterious and intriguing, and management, noticing traffic at the baccarat table now tripled, asked no questions. Beirut was that kind of city. Cinder had wondered if she would find it degrading—she'd grown up in a hotel, cleaning rooms, cleaning kitchens, little more than a slave to the owner. This was different, however, because she was in control this time.

"I rather enjoy the _outfit,"_ Adam commented, sparing her a long look. Cinder was wearing a tuxedo—sort of. Above the waist, it was a regular tux, but below the waist, the bottoms were high-cut over her hips, with black boots up to the knees, over fishnet pantyhose. Cinder's legs made men into gibbering fools and women jealous; even if she wasn't wearing a mask, she was sure that no one would've noticed her scars.

"Have a seat, fix a drink, whatever you like," she told them. "I have news from Lil' Miss." Adam didn't get a drink, but dropped onto the couch, setting his sword to one side; Cinder noticed he was dressed in his black flight suit, obviously not worried someone would recognize him. Neo opened the refrigerator and cracked open a beer; she was dressed casually, and Cinder had already noticed that the diminutive assassin could simply disappear into any crowd when she wished. They were an unlikely trio, together for revenge, but with an odd respect and even friendship blooming between them—if such a thing could exist between such people.

Cinder waited until Neo sat on the couch, then addressed them. "Lil' Miss heard from Emerald Sustrai, of all people—and since Emerald is with Salem, that means this message comes from her. Ruby Flight was at Darvaza in Turkmenistan two days ago. Apparently the locals there tried to kill them, which would've made our job much easier, but they escaped—and napalmed the locals on the way out."

"Good," Neo grinned.

"Salem believes they headed south to Tehran, and Lil' Miss believes she can confirm that." Cinder pulled out a map and spread it out on the floor. "We can assume that they did not stay in Tehran for long—the political situation there is too volatile—so that means they flew either to Incirlik in Turkey, which is the nearest NATO base, or an airbase in Israel."

"I don't think they're in Israel," Adam said. "The White Fang cell here told me that some other veterans of Beacon were down there at Ramat David—Sun Flight and Coffee Flight. There's been a heavy GRIMM presence in southern Egypt and the Sudan, of all places, and the Heyl Ha'avir—" Adam used the formal name for the Israeli Air Defense Force "—has been fighting them over the Red Sea. If Ruby Flight has this JINN thing, I doubt they'll be getting mixed up in that."

"So it's Incirlik," Cinder mused. She sat cross-legged in front of the map. "Too heavily defended for us to do anything there."

Adam shook his head. "They're going into Europe, probably to give JINN to Ironwood in Brussels."

"More than likely at Ironwood's forward headquarters in Poznan. CNN reported him there yesterday, anyway." Cinder tapped Poznan, in western Poland, not far from the border of the Poland Dead Zone at the Vistula River, then Incirlik in southern Turkey. "Fly in through Greece, then over Yugoslavia, over the Slovakian Dead Zone, to Poland? We might could catch them over Slovakia."

Adam stared at the map, then once again shook his head. "Too well patrolled. The EU knows Incirlik has an American prescence. They're sure to be watching it. It's too obvious an approach."

"Pyrrha's Greek," Neo put in. "She's a heroine there."

"She also renounced her Greek citizenship," Cinder countered. "Major Nikos is none too popular in Greece at the moment." She felt the fingers on her artificial arm twitch at the mention of Pyrrha Nikos. "So not Greece…then where…"

"How would _we_ do it?" Neo asked. "Since we're going to have to anyway."

"Too dangerous to fly over the Dead Zones east of Poland and Czechia; they'd be dead, either by GRIMM or running out of fuel, long before they made Sweden. And the Swedes probably wouldn't let them in; they can't afford the diplomatic fallout." Adam stroked his chin. Cinder noticed he needed a shave; red stubble had sprouted there. "So that means the circle route, through North Africa, to Gibraltar, possibly—the British haven't gone along with the embargo, so they could stop there—across the Bay of Biscay to the UK, or even Menagerie." He couldn't keep the bitterness out of his voice.

"Rather far, assuming they have no tanker support," Cinder said.

"The Sixth Fleet could—no, half of Ruby Flight can't refuel from Navy tankers," Adam corrected himself. He reached forward and tapped Malta, then Algeria. "They have to land somewhere for fuel. The RAF would let them into Malta…or they could land in Algeria."

"Isn't Algeria part of France?" Neo wanted to know.

"More or less," Adam answered. "They're a French colony, but not part of France proper. The French government handles their foreign policy, but otherwise they're independent. Since they're not part of the EU, they could land there." He shook his head. "No, it has to be Malta, or Gibraltar."

"It's Algeria." Cinder spoke it with conviction, and both Adam and Neo looked at her. " _That's_ their plan for evading the embargo. They'll land in Algeria, then fly north into France. Once they're past the patrols, they'll easily make Poland. The EU isn't looking _inside_ their borders."

"Why Algeria?" Adam asked.

Cinder smiled. "Jaune Arc. He used to talk about his sisters a lot at Beacon, and I remember him mentioning that one of his sisters lives in Algiers. That's where they're headed. Once they land there, they walk over to the French military mission, trade on being the friends of France's latest martyr, and the French Air Force will let them fly in. The EU's militaries aren't too happy about the embargo to begin with, so I doubt Ruby won't have to do more than bat her silver eyes and Pyrrha have a good cry over her poor dead lover before the French are letting them through."

Adam gave it some thought, then nodded. "It makes sense. Perfect sense." He ran a finger over the western Mediterranean. "When were they in Tehran? Two days ago?"

"Lil' Miss believes so."

"Then they were at Incirlik yesterday, and probably left this morning." He leaned back on the couch. "No chance to catch them now, which means our only real chance is getting them between Algeria and France."

"How?" Cinder questioned. "Too far away. I think our best bet will be to try and find them in Poland."

"I can get us into Yugoslavia, easy," Neo said. "We did a lot of business there, both my gang and Roman's."

Adam didn't seem to hear her. "I have contacts in Libya with Qaddafi's regime. We can operate out of Tripoli. It's just within our range to fly from here to Tobruk."

"No," Cinder said firmly. "We can make Libya, yes, but attacking Ruby Flight between Algeria and France also risks getting jumped by the French patrols out of Corsica, or the Spanish out of Mallorca. Neo's right, Adam—we have to try in Poland. That's the Wild West there; we can easily make our move."

Adam looked as if he was going to argue for a moment, his face going red, but then he just as quickly relaxed and shrugged. "I suppose that's true. Very well—Poland it is. The White Fang does not have much of a presence there, I'm afraid."

"We'll do what we've always done," Neo laughed, "lie, cheat, steal, and survive."

"True," he admitted.

"Then it's settled," Cinder stated with finality. "We'll catch them in Poland. How long do you need to get hold of your contacts in Yugoslavia, Neo?"

"About 24 hours."

"Then we'll leave day after tomorrow, first thing in the morning." Cinder took off the tuxedo jacket. "In which case, to hell with my job. I'll let Lil' Miss know our plans—broad strokes—and then we can hit the town. I feel like celebrating."

Neo jumped to her feet in happiness—Cinder suspected that Neo had been funding her stay through pickpocketing—but Adam instead reached out and grabbed Cinder by the hips. "I think I want to stay in," he said huskily.

"Oh," Cinder replied, running her hand over his jaw. "Well, I suppose that can be arranged." She looked at Neo. "You don't mind?"

Neo shrugged. She hesitated, and for a wild moment, Cinder thought the assassin was going to ask her and Adam to make it a threesome. Then she let out a sudden giggle, blew them a kiss, and skipped out the door to find her own fun.

Cinder pulled Adam to his feet and led him over to the bed. "You know, I know this wonderful place in Berlin…" He ran his fingers up and down her sides as she took off his mask, bending down and kissing the scar. "You know, I still don't know what SDC stands for…"

"Schnee Deutsches Corporation," he said, kissing her neck. "The old name for Schnee GmbH. I used to work for them, a lifetime ago." He pulled her hair back gently, exposing the ruined side of her face. "Keep the tuxedo on," he instructed. "For now."

* * *

Twelve restless hours later, Cinder was awakened by sunlight streaming through the window, though the dawn was on the opposite side of the hotel. She dreamily stared at the blue sky, and her tuxedo—which was draped across the chair, and on the floor, partially covering the map. Then she rolled over to put her arms on those wonderfully sculpted pectorals of Adam Taurus…and there was nothing there. The bed was cold.

Cinder sat up. They'd made love twice during the night, the second time with such intensity that she'd been in a state of pleasant stupefaction when it was over, and had fallen asleep quickly. She spotted something on the table, a folded origami crane. She got up and padded naked over to the table, unfolding the crane, and read the note.

_You are a beautiful woman, Cinder Fall. I hope to see you again someday—all of you. These last few weeks have made me live again. Perhaps I will find you after I've revenged myself on Blake Belladonna. But if not, they call Beirut the Paris of the Middle East. If so, we can say we will always have Paris. You may consider this a waste, but just as you must have your revenge on Ruby Rose, I must have mine on Blake._

_Adam_

Cinder tossed the note back onto the table, walked to the window, and stared out over the ocean. "You damn fool," she whispered. "You damn fool."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So in this world, Lebanon never fell into civil war (the factions there decided there was a much bigger threat than each other), and Yugoslavia hasn't broken up (once more, the various people of Yugoslavia stuck together in the face of a common enemy, this time the GRIMM). Algeria has reverted to being a French colony, and apparently Malta is still part of the British Empire. Maybe someday I'll write a "World of RWBY Wings" chapter, but for now, I like dropping these little world-building hints. I also realized that, in an earlier chapter, I still had Adam with "SDC" imprinted on his face, so I had to do a saving throw on that one.


	13. Go Tell the Spartans

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ruby and Norn Flights have reached Algiers, where they meet Saphron Cotta-Arc. 
> 
> But there's surprises waiting...including the return of a friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yep, it's time for the "Argus" chapter, though Argus is Algiers in this world. Close enough for government work.
> 
> I'm not sure if I have any French readers, but I have to apologize a little. Caroline Cordovin has to be French, and I didn't change her personality much from canon RWBY. So unfortunately you might find her attitude kind of insulting, or cliche. Just know that Cordovin is not a good person in any nationality or plane of existence...
> 
> And finally...yep, it's *that* chapter. Get ready for some feels.

_Algiers Houari Boumediene International Airport_

_Algiers, Republic of Algeria_

_29 July 2001_

Yang Xiao Long looked through the perimeter fence of the airport out at Algiers. "Lot bigger than I thought it would be." Before anyone could reply, the gathered members of Ruby and Norn Flights saw Pyrrha Nikos return with a tall man, wearing the standard tropical uniform of the French Air Force, the Armee de l'Air. The French, with their long history of fighting wars in North Africa, had adopted a rather sensible uniform for the desert—a short sleeved shirt and shorts. Yang made some appreciative noises for the officer, who definitely looked like he worked out. "Everyone, this is Lieutenant Colonel Etienne Legrand—he's the NATO liasion here." They all came to attention and saluted, since Legrand outranked everyone but Maria Calavera, and she was retired. He returned the salute crisply, then smiled and shook hands. "A pleasure to meet you," he said, in accented but excellent English.

"Are you sure about that?" Blake said. "With the embargo and everything."

Legrand shrugged. "What politicians do is between them. I can tell you that we in the Armee de l'Air do not think what happened at Beacon was anything more than a brave coalition of international fighter pilots defending their base. If General Ironwood is acting somewhat irrational, that is far outweighed by what happened there. And many of us have not forgotten Belleau Wood or Normandy." He put a hand on his chest. "You are guests. It is as simple as that."

"Which is why you had us land here, instead of the main base at Boufarik," Qrow added, his voice lower than usual.

Legrand again shrugged. "We felt it best to keep your presence a secret for as long as possible. Algeria is not included in the embargo, but here you won't have to worry about your aircraft being impounded." He paused. "Hopefully."

"That's comforting," Qrow replied, his voice heavy with sarcasm.

"If it was up to me," Legrand told him, "you would be refueled and on your way by now. However, with the embargo, these things will take time." He motioned to Pyrrha. "According to Major Nikos, you have friends here in Algiers?"

"Relatives of a friend," Pyrrha answered. "I called ahead, but I had to leave a message. I don't know if they'll be all that welcoming or not."

"We will find out. Afterwards, we will put you up in a hotel," Legrand said. "For now, let me drive you to your friends' home. Once I've dropped you off at your friends', I'll go have a talk with my commanding officer. She will make the final decision on whether or not to let you fly to France. Naturally, she will have to consult with Paris."

"Which means we're not getting through," Ren sighed.

"You might be surprised, Captain. Again, not everyone in the European Union thinks that fighting men and women should be punished for the actions of their political leaders. Some of us are quite aware that this embargo was driven by, ah, certain elements in the EU." He looked pointedly at Weiss. He spread his hands. "But…that is for another time. Let me at least show you some hospitality."

He led them across the burning tarmac; sweat quickly stained everyone's flight suits. "Will our aircraft be safe?" Oscar asked. JINN was safely concealed in his duffel bag.

"They're under lock and key in one of our military hangars. They will be fine." He pointed to one of the larger hangars at the airport, then smiled over his shoulder. "Though I will not guarantee that some of my people will not salivate over such exotic aircraft. We don't get many F-22s in these parts, let alone J-10s or even F-14s—and certainly not a F-23." Yang beamed with pride.

They climbed into a van, and everyone gave a satisfied groan of pleasure at the wonderfully cool and air-conditioned interior. He drove them out of the airport—though not without some worried glances at the hangar—and into the city. "Yang was saying it was a lot bigger than we thought," Blake commented.

"It's actually one of the largest cities in Africa now—almost the size of Paris," Legrand replied.

"I'm a bit confused," Ruby admitted. "Is Algeria part of France or independent?"

Legrand laughed. "A little bit of both. It _is_ independent, in that the people of Algeria elect their own government. However, France controls their foreign policy. Algeria actually achieved its independence in 1962, but then the Third World War happened, and then the GRIMM attacked. Though only a few GRIMM reached North Africa, the threat of worse led Algeria becoming part of the French Empire again—though more like Canada's relationship to Britain than the bad old days of being a colony. It seems to have worked out fairly well so far."

"So no tensions?" Blake asked.

"There are, of course," Legrand said guardedly. "But for the most part, both peoples try to work together. Algeria has its own military, but France keeps a large military presence here to help keep the people safe and trade between the two nations steady." Everyone sensed there was something, or a lot of somethings, Legrand wasn't telling them, but he changed the subject to showing them the city of Algiers. It was a curious mix of Algerian customs and French infrastructure, from modern glass-and-steel skyscrapers to the white stone of the old Casbah. After about forty minutes, they arrived in a suburb. Here, most—but certainly not all—of the faces were ethnically French, and the houses could have just as easily come from a French village in Provence or Brittany.

Legrand pulled to a stop in front of a two-story brick house, with stairs leading up a hill to the front door. "Well, here we are," he said. "I'll wait to make sure everything is all right. If it isn't, we can go to that hotel."

"Thank you," Pyrrha said, and got out of the van. Ruby got out as well. "I'll go with you." She ducked her head back in the van. "Maybe it's not a good idea for all of us to go up there at once." There were several nods, and Ruby followed Pyrrha up the steps. Or at least halfway up, because Pyrrha suddenly stopped. Ruby noticed the Greek girl's shoulders were shaking. "I can't do this," she whispered. "Oh God, Ruby. It's Jaune's sister."

"They've already been notified, Pyrrha," Ruby told her. "They know about Jaune."

"But still…what if they hate me? What if they…" She shook her head. "I can't. I can't. I'll wait in the van. I'll get Weiss—she knows how to handle this." Before Ruby could try and persuade her, Pyrrha turned to run back down the stairs. Before she could even do that, however, the door to the house opened.

Ruby's breath caught in her throat. Even if she hadn't been expecting it, there was no question this was Jaune's sister; the resemblance was unmistakable. The hair was slightly darker, what Ruby supposed was called a dishwater blonde, but the shape of the face, and the blue eyes, were Jaune to the life. "Hello?" she said in English. "Are you Pyrrha Nikos and Ruby Rose?" Even the slight inflections in the accent were like Jaune. "I'm Saphron!"

Pyrrha burst into tears and sank to her knees. Saphron's hands went to her mouth, and then she dashed out and knelt on the stairs, putting her arm around Pyrrha. "It's all right," she said, "it's all right."

"I'm so sorry," Pyrrha sobbed. "I just…I'm so sorry."

Saphron got Pyrrha to her feet, and hugged her. "You have nothing to be sorry about, Miss Nikos." She pulled away, smiling, even as the tears ran down her cheeks as well. "Jaune wrote me about you."

"He…he did?"

"Yes. And you're every bit as beautiful as he described." She grasped Pyrrha's hands in hers. "Jaune said you were his best friend. That means you are _my_ best friend." Saphron kissed both of Pyrrha's cheeks, then turned to Ruby. "You must be Ruby Rose! I admit you are _exactly_ how Jaune described you."

"Oh boy," Ruby laughed, despite her own eyes being a bit misty. "I hope that's a good thing."

"A very good thing!" Saphron kissed both of Ruby's cheeks as well, which left the American girl blushing; Ruby didn't realize it was a traditional greeting. Saphron looked beyond them. "Oh my! Is that the rest of Ruby and Juniper Flights?"

"Yeah. We wanted to come by and pay our respects." Ruby looked a bit sheepish. "I know the French Air Force probably already notified you, but…since we were coming this way anyway…we thought maybe you'd like to meet us. Personally." She felt dumb saying it; Saphron didn't know anyone in the van except through Jaune's letters, and Oscar not even that.

Saphron nodded. "It will be crowded, but we'll manage."

"Er…huh?"

"You're staying with us, of course," Saphron said, in a voice that brooked no argument.

"All of us?"

"Certainly."

"We couldn't," Pyrrha told her, but Saphron was already heading down the stairs, arms wide.

* * *

The house was fair-sized, but it was crowded with ten pilots, Saphron, and her son, Adrian. To some confusion, Adrian looked nothing like Saphron: he had black hair, and where Saphron had the pale skin of southern France, his skin was the darker tones of Algeria. Nor could he explain the situation, since he was barely more than a year old. Ruby wanted to ask Saphron, but was held back by the feeling that it wouldn't be polite, and the fact that Jaune's sister was too busy rushing around the house, finding bedding, places for the pilots to sleep, and checking to see if she was going to need to go to the store for more food. Ruby and Norn Flights, plus Qrow and Maria, had found places to sit on the floor, on the sofa, in two upholstered chairs. Yang and Weiss were one of those on the floor. Adrian had a toy Mirage, and Yang appropriated it, flying around in dives, spins, and breaks, much to the baby's amusement. He began to laugh, which made Yang laugh too. "You're so cute!" she said, in a much higher tone of voice than usual; Ruby remembered dimly Yang doing the same to her when they were little. "Yes, you are! Look at your little face!"

Yang handed Adrian the Mirage back, and the infant offered it to Weiss. "Aww!" she cooed. "You're such a cute widdle guy!" She switched to singsong German, and Adrian giggled even harder.

"Uh oh," Qrow whispered to Oscar. "Biological clocks just rang. I can hear their ovaries popping from here."

"We can _heaaar_ you," Yang half-sang.

"I don't _caaaare,_ " Qrow replied in the same tone. Oscar smothered a grin.

Blake, who upon seeing Adrian had remembered Kali Belladonna's obsession with grandchildren, looked at a picture on a shelf. It showed Jaune in the middle of seven sisters of varying ages, all with the same blonde hair and blue eyes; two of them were twins. All the sisters were smiling, grinning and/or laughing, but Jaune was frowning, his hair tied in pigtails, holding up a sign that read _Help_ in French. _So he really_ did _have seven sisters,_ Blake thought. "Saphron, you're the only Arc living here?"

Saphron finally sat down on the corner of the couch. "No, not the only one. Mother actually lives here as well, though she commutes back and forth to Marseille or Provence, where the rest of my sisters live. Her brother—our uncle—has a vineyard near Nimes. Father passed away a few years ago. I doubt you'll get to meet her, unfortunately-she's in Marseille this week."

"What brought you to Algeria?"

The front door opened, and everyone turned to look. Another woman stared back, and even with part of her face blocked by two huge bags of groceries, this had to be Adrian's mother: they had the same dark hair and tanned skin, though the mother also wore red-rimmed glasses. Saphron got up. "She did. Everyone, this is my wife, Terra Cotta-Arc."

" _Wife?"_ Ruby exclaimed. "I mean…uh…hi!" Now she felt like a bigger idiot. The others didn't seem as shocked, and they all waved.

Saphron and Terra laughed. "Don't worry, Ruby. It's quite all right. We understand that our relationship isn't exactly…well, perhaps it's unusual to you."

"I'm sorry," Ruby apologized.

Terra waved it off. "I'm not offended." She looked around the room. "Quite a party! You weren't kidding, hon. Can I get some help, please?" The question was addressed to Saphron, but Pyrrha, Ren and Nora were on their feet and helping her before Saphron could answer. Ruby got to hers as well. Terra directed traffic, getting the groceries put away.

"I'm sorry for being so surprised," Ruby apologized again. "I'm being twelve kinds of moron here."

Saphron just laughed. "Same-sex marriages aren't common, even in Europe. Technically, it's not even legal here in Algeria! But no one cares, so we don't either."

"Is it legal in France?" Pyrrha asked.

"It is," Terra answered, "but, to be perfectly honest, it's somewhat frowned upon when one of the people in question is French and the other is Algerian." She frowned. "Enough about such depressing matters! Please, tell us how you got here."

Sandwiches were made while they told Saphron and Terra about events since Beacon—what they could talk about, which wasn't much. It was still enough to elicit amazement from the Cotta-Arcs, as they returned to the living room and sat down to eat. Ruby ate with sandwiches in both hands, humming happily; they'd had a very quick and light breakfast at Incirlik that morning, then a long, thankfully boring flight over the Mediterranean, threading the needle between hostile skies over Libya and embargoed skies over Sicily.

"You're sure it's all right if we stay here?" Weiss asked.

"For the last time, of course!" Saphron smiled. "As I said, any friend of Jaune is a friend of ours. We're happy to house true heroes and heroines."

"You all risk so much to keep people like us safe. It's the least we can do," Terra added. She opened her mouth to say more, when her cellphone began to buzz. She rolled her eyes. "Excuse me, please." She got up, flipped open her phone, and went into the kitchen.

"Everything okay?" Blake asked.

"Oh yes—or it will be." Saphron glanced behind her. "Terra's an air traffic controller. She handles traffic through Algiers—not the airport, but incoming traffic through the western Mediterranean. The French military uses the same system, because—" she looked down at Adrian and began singing, "—the radaaar's on the friiitz and guess who's getting the blaaame!"

"That would be me-eee!" Terra yelled from the kitchen.

"It's a pain in the derriere, isn't it, Adrian?" Saphron tickled the baby, who laughed, setting off another wistful sigh from Yang and Weiss—and from Nora, who kept glancing at Ren, who pretended not to notice. Ruby wondered what the hell was wrong with them, or maybe what was wrong with her. She'd never really thought about having children; that would interfere with flying. She caught Pyrrha looking away, trying not to cry for what might have been.

So did Saphron. "What's your plan for tomorrow?" she said loudly, both out of genuine curiosity and to distract Pyrrha.

Ruby swallowed the remains of two sandwiches. "Well, we're hoping to get to France. Colonel Legrand is supposed to contact us."

"How long will that take?"

"We're not sure," Qrow answered. "His CO has to talk to Paris. A lot of diplomatic and bureaucratic bullsh—" He remembered the child. "—bullcrap," he finished.

"This stupid embargo," Saphron said sourly. "It's been helping no one. Other than the fat cats like Jacques Schnee—" She grimaced. "Sorry, Miss Schnee; I do not mean to offend."

"I'm not offended," Weiss echoed Terra. "I'd call him far worse, actually."

"Anyway," Ruby said, "we're hoping it won't take more than a day or two." As Terra returned from the kitchen, shaking her head, Pyrrha's cellphone began to buzz. "Speak of the devil and he appears," she commented, and took it out of her flight suit. "Major Nikos speaking. Hello, Colonel." She listened through a one-sided conversation, then spoke. "Very well, sir. We'll be waiting. Yes, sir." She closed the phone. "Legrand's coming by in about twenty minutes. His commanding officer wants to see us. All of us."

"Well," Yang remarked, "I guess that's a good sign, right?"

* * *

_Office of the Commanding Officer, French Military Mission_

_Boufarik Airbase, Republic of Algeria_

_29 July 2001_

It had been another twenty minutes for Legrand to take them to Boufarik, the large military airbase southwest of Algiers. Night had fallen, and it was surprisingly cold. At the front gate, a pair of overofficious guards had at first denied them entry, only reluctantly acquiescing when Legrand had pulled rank. They had then subjected all of them to a patdown that Blake thought was one step below sexual assault, and only then were they allowed into the waiting room of the commanding officer of the _Francais Force l'Algerie,_ French forces in Algeria.

Maria sat in one of the chairs, leaning on her cane. She squinted at the name on the door. "Oh shit," she whispered.

"What's wrong?" Oscar asked.

"Well, I… _might_ know the CO."

"Hey, that's great!" Ruby exulted. "If she's your friend, that explains why she wants to see all of us! She's going to let us through!"

Maria winced. "I wouldn't exactly call us friends."

"Acquaintances?" Weiss wanted to know.

"Not quite."

"Colleagues?" Blake asked hopefully.

"No, not really."

"Mortal enemies?" Yang sighed.

Maria nodded. "That's the one."

Oscar's eyes rounded. "Wait, what? Why?"

"You run _one_ pistachio smuggling ring, disrupt _one_ major airshow, and suddenly you're barred from France for life."

Qrow put his face in his hands. "You've got to be shitting me."

"Now, now, let's not give up hope yet." Maria smiled. "Maybe she's dead."

The door opened. One of the overofficious, gropey guards had gone in ahead of them, and he stepped out. "Attention! Commanding officer, Brigadier General Caroline Cordovin, French Air Force, present!" All of them leapt to their feet and stood at attention.

Ruby half-expected a tall, granite-faced woman, someone like an older version of Winter Schnee. Instead, to Ruby's abject surprise, she was instead confronted by someone shorter than her—and Ruby was exactly one half-inch over the minimum height requirement for the USAF. Caroline Cordovin was shorter than her by an inch or two; only Rissa Arashikaze had been shorter, and Ruby wouldn't care to put money on it. The general's hair was completely gray, and her face was not so much granite than what Taiyang Xiao Long would call lived in. Her uniform was immaculate, but her diminutive height and doughy face took away the dignity of the uniform: Cordovin, Ruby thought with a suppressed smile, looked like a pissed-off toad.

Cordovin barely acknowledged the others, but instead stared right at Maria. "Bitch," she said by way of greeting.

Maria smiled back. " _Puta_ ," she replied.

Cordovin's mouth twitched. She stared at the other pilots. "I see you've chosen larger contraband to try and smuggle in this time."

The former GRIMM Reaper laughed. "Cordo, Cordo, Cordo. You know, they say time changes people, but I see you've still got that stick right up your tight ass."

Cordovin stepped forward, but so did Ruby, not really wanting to see two elderly women try to beat each other to death. "Er, General, ma'am, hello! I'm Captain Ruby Rose, United States Air Force, and I was wondering if you would mind hearing us out about—"

The general turned blazing eyes on Ruby. "I've already heard it from Colonel Legrand." She threw the colonel a contemptous nod before returning her attention to Ruby. "You Americans are clearly incapable of comprehending the importance of our mission here in Algeria. So allow me to say this slowly, with smaller words: this base, this mission, the very safety of our two nations is my duty to uphold, as only I have the wit and tenacity for such a task. It is why I was sent here."

"Or maybe France just wanted to get you as far away as possible," Maria observed, which was not helping.

"You shut up!" Cordovin snapped. She rounded on Ruby again. "Your country wouldn't even _exist_ without France, and what do we get in return? You Americans put orbital weapons platforms into operation, against every treaty about space ever signed!"

Ruby fought down her temper. "General, we know mistakes were made at Beacon. We know because we were there."

Weiss stepped forward. "No one's happy about the embargo, General Cordovin. We know that General Ironwood may have overstepped his authority by bringing in more American divisions to Poland, but he's just worried. It's why we need to talk to—"

Cordovin cut her off with a slice of her hand. "Ironwood is a fool! If the Americans want to make Europe their enemy, then so be it! We shall prevail!"

Yang rolled her eyes. "Victor India," she remarked. Ruby bit her lip.

"What's that?" Cordovin's head came around to lock onto Yang.

"Very Important," Yang said evenly, staring back at the general without fear. "You're Victor India, ma'am."

"Huh. Glad to hear it, Captain." The general turned to Weiss, and Ruby stared at the ceiling while Yang smirked at her. It was an old insult of their father's, when he got frustrated at someone. Victor India was NATO phonetic for V and I, but it did _not_ stand for Very Important; it actually stood for Village Idiot.

"If," Cordovin was saying, "if Miss Schnee wishes to return to Germany, she will be allowed to do so. We will allow her safe passage, as befitting her status as an officer of the Luftwaffe. But France will not be responsible for her… _friends…_ of questionable character." She looked pointedly at Blake. _Great,_ Ruby thought. _This old bag is not only a stuck up bitch who doesn't like Americans, she's also a racist._

Weiss' hands curled into fists. "What is that supposed to mean?"

"It means," Cordovin said, "that we're done here. You have 48 hours to leave Algeria before I will have you arrested. I grant you that much time because I am not without mercy. Dismissed."

"I am Greek," Pyrrha spoke up as Cordovin returned to her office.

"And I am Chinese," Ren put in.

"You gave up your citizenship, Major. And who cares, Captain. Good evening." Cordovin said, and shut the door.

* * *

The same two guards escorted them to the front gate. As the gates shut, Nora turned and flipped them off. "Go fuck yourself, you fucking fuckers!" she shouted as she climbed into the van.

"That's telling them," Ren sighed.

Legrand started the van. "I'm sorry. She chewed me out as well. There's nothing more I can do." He backed out of the parking lot and turned onto the main road. "I can extend that to 72 hours. I doubt she would notice or care about an extra day."

"My fault." Maria shook her head. "Cordo hates my guts. She's hated me ever since I made her look like the fool she is at the Paris Air Show."

"It didn't help," Legrand told her, "but this goes further than just you, Colonel Calavera. You called it, I'm afraid: Cordovin was given a graveyard promotion to brigadier general and then shuffled off here. She'll be forced to retire within a year. I'm afraid she's taking it out on everyone around her."

"Does she just hate Americans?" Yang asked.

Legrand chuckled. "She hates everyone."

"Maybe I should go," Weiss said into the silence.

"No, Weiss. We won't leave you." Blake put a hand on her friend's shoulder. "We'll find a way in. Together."

"Roger that," Ruby said.

Nora contented herself with one last finger in Cordovin's general direction from the back seat. "So what's the plan, boss?" she asked Ruby.

Qrow was the one to answer, his voice bitter. "The plan? We don't have one. Cordovin just fucked us." He leaned forward to Legrand. "There a good bar near the Cotta-Arc's place? I need a drink."

Legrand looked at him with concern in the rearview mirror, but nodded. "I know of a place." Ruby looked at her uncle as well, but Qrow only stared out of the window.

They reached the bar about fifteen minutes of awkward silence later. Qrow climbed over Ruby to get out. "Major," Pyrrha warned. "Remember what we spoke about in Tehran."

"I don't fucking care," Qrow shot back. "Not anymore."

"Uncle Qrow, please! I really think we should try to come up with something…" Her voice trailed off as Qrow ignored her, walking into the bar. Instead, she shut the door.

"What the hell is wrong with Uncle Qrow?" Yang said. "It's not our fault we can't go on!"

"If he's going to be an asshole, then we'll just come up with something without him. Right, Pyr?" Nora grinned at her friend.

"Actually…" Pyrrha opened the door on her side of the van. Everyone stared at her, but she smiled sadly. "No, I'm not going to get drunk too. I just want to walk around. Clear my head." She got out and looked at Legrand. "Is it safe to walk around here?"

"It is. There's a nice park over there, and some cafes. The Cotta-Arcs live about five blocks up the hill, on Avenue Marshal Giraud. You should have no trouble finding it," Legrand told her.

"We'll come with you." Ren motioned Nora out of the van. Oscar hesitated, looked at Ruby, then sat back down. Ren gave him a nod, understanding: what was left of Juniper Flight, not Norn Flight, needed to handle this. Legrand waved, and drove off.

* * *

"Damn. Bit cold out here for July in frickin' North Africa," Nora said, rubbing her arms. They had changed into their uniforms before meeting Cordovin, but it was the USAF summerweight uniform she wore. "Hey, there's a café over there, just like the colonel said. Why don't we grab some coffee?"

"I'm okay," Pyrrha replied. "You two go on ahead." She sat down on a wrought-iron bench.

"You don't want anything?" Nora looked at Ren. Pyrrha smiled and shook her head. "Okay…"

"We'll be right back," Ren said, and followed Nora to the café, with a worried look behind him.

Pyrrha leaned forward. She half expected to start crying, but no tears came, only an overwhelming feeling of failure. She had realized that, in some way, she had _wanted_ Saphron Arc to hate her, to curse her, to throw her off her steps and tell her to never return. Instead, Saphron had welcomed her as a friend, almost as a part of her family. Jaune's sister had not even mentioned her brother's death, just talked about how much he'd liked all of them, in the letters he wrote home to his mother every week at Beacon. Jaune's mother had then given them to Saphron, who apparently had been the closest to her brother of all the Arc sisters. Saphron only wanted to remember the best of Jaune; she wanted no sadness around his memory. Pyrrha understood it, and welcomed it, but could not bring herself to think of Jaune that way. She could remember the good times, of course—but she remembered more his touch that one, magical night, the bittersweet memory of his skin against hers, and then that shattering, horrible moment of watching his Mirage explode from Cinder Fall's missile. She'd avenged Jaune over Tsushima, but with no body recovered from the wreckage of Cinder's aircraft, even that felt hollow: Cinder was still out there, still trying to kill another of her friends.

Pyrrha leaned back on the bench, and took a deep breath. Qrow Branwen would never know how tempted she was to follow him into that bar, to drown her sorrows alongside his, to drink herself into oblivion and keep the memories at bay for just one night.

Then she saw something in the park. "It can't be," she murmured, and got to her feet. She crossed the street, walked into the park—another piece of France that seemed strange here, a park that looked like it had been somehow transported from Paris itself. She followed the path to the center of the park, to the statue she'd glimpsed in between the trees. Pyrrha's vision swam; she nearly fell.

The statue was Jaune Arc.

He was dressed in his flight suit, staring upwards at the sky, his hands on his hips, a helmet sculpted at his feet. Small French flags decorated the base. It was a heroic pose: the sculptor had chosen to make Jaune a tad more square-jawed than he really was, and bulkier, but there was no doubt who it was supposed to be. Any doubt at all was taken away by the inscription at the base, in large block letters, in French: _IN HONOR OF JAUNE ARC, ONE OF MANY PILOTS WHO FOUGHT VALIANTLY AT THE BATTLE OF BEACON._ Below that, was a quote from Napoleon: _But all that he will learn will be of little use to him if he does not have the sacred fire in the depths of his heart, this driving ambition which alone can enable one to perform great deeds._

"Mother of God," Pyrrha breathed, somehow keeping her feet. "It's you, Jaune. It's you." She remembered the hallucination in the hospital in Georgia, seeing Jaune as an angel, holding out a hand, that lopsided, goofy smile on his face, offering to lead her to heaven. She'd tried to, following the ghost to the roof before the hospital staff tackled her, before she could throw herself off. Then she'd slashed her wrists, trying to find another way. Luckily, she'd managed to do it wrong, and other than losing blood and what little remained of her dignity, Pyrrha had failed. She would have found some other way, she knew, had it not been for Ren and Nora—and Jaune's final message—forcing her back to something resembling sanity. Ruby, Yang, Weiss, Blake, Oscar, even Qrow had all helped since, helping Pyrrha find her purpose and to live again. The statue, however, pulled Pyrrha back to that hospital room, and the vision.

"It's really beautiful, isn't it?"

Pyrrha nearly collapsed again, because the voice, though female, sounded so much like Jaune. She whirled around, her mind snapping back to reality; it had to be Saphron. It wasn't: the woman looked very much like Saphron, but her hair was graying, and she was considerably older. There was a bundle of white roses in her hands; plenty of white and red roses already decorated the base.

It took a moment for Pyrrha to find her voice. "Yes…very much so." She forced herself to look at the statue, while her mind tried to grasp who this was. Could it be Jaune's mother? She was supposed to be in Marseille. "Why in Algiers?"

"Lieutenant Arc was the principal ferry pilot for Dassault, and he flew nearly every Mirage the Algerian Air Force flies. He made a lot of friends here. Not as close as the ones he fought beside at Beacon, but friends all the same. The pilots here pooled their money and commissioned this statue, especially after he was awarded the Legion of Honor…posthumously." The woman smiled. "I'm glad he was always surrounded by such amazing people."

Pyrrha could not stop the tears now. She cried unashamedly. "He should be standing here," she sniffled pitifully. "Not me. I don't deserve it. He did."

"He _is_ standing here," the woman said. Pyrrha stared at her. "He…understood that he had a responsibility. To try. I don't think he would regret his choice, because a pilot, a real man, would understand that there really was no choice to make. And a pilot and a true man was what Jaune—Lieutenant Arc—always wanted to be."

Pyrrha stepped closer. "I knew Jaune Arc," she said, wiping her eyes. "I knew him…very well." She looked back at the statue. "I have been called a heroine, the Invincible Girl. I don't think I can ever live up to that reputation. I never wanted to. But Jaune?" She smiled. "Jaune was… _is_ a hero. No one had to put up a statue for all of us to realize that. No medal needed to be awarded. We always knew. We always will. We'll never forget him."

The woman sniffed, and out of the corner of one eye, Pyrrha saw her wipe away tears as well. "Thank you, Major Nikos." She set down the roses. "No lilies or violets…" the woman began, in English.

"…for dead fighter pilots," Pyrrha finished, an old fighter pilot song that dated back to World War II. "Cheer up, my lads, bless them all." Then she heard her name called, saw Ren and Nora, and waved. When she turned back, the woman was gone, almost as if she had never been there, though the roses remained.

"Pyrrha, where did you go?" Nora was asking. Then she looked up, saw the statue, and dropped her coffee. "Holy shit," she gasped. Ren stopped as well, his mouth falling open. He said something in Chinese that Pyrrha didn't understand, but it was echoing Nora's statement. They stood there, for a long time: Juniper Flight, together again, probably for the last time.

"I'm sorry," Pyrrha said, as the desert wind rustled the trees. "I've been a poor flight commander, and not a great friend. I thought…I thought killing Cinder would end this, or playing that message every night, that I could live with this—"

"Pyrrha." Ren set his coffee down. "This has to stop."

"You're not being fair to yourself," Nora added. "What you did in Japan, to Cinder, when you just went straight at her…you can't do that, Pyr. We love you, just like we love Jaune. We're not just a flight. We're a family. You and Jaune were, _are,_ the only family Ren and I have ever had."

Pyrrha chuckled. "Good Lord, Nora. We only knew each other for a few weeks at Beacon."

"So?"

"The point is," Ren said, "we don't want to lose you too."

Pyrrha was silent, staring up at Jaune's statue. "He never won any of the practice dogfights," she finally spoke. "But he never lost against the GRIMM. And he knew he couldn't take Cinder. But he had to try. For me. For all of us."

"So he did," Ren agreed.

"Maybe we should too," Nora remarked.

"Yes," Pyrrha nodded. Then she smiled, quickly joined by Ren and Nora.

"Jaune may not be flying with us in his Mirage," Nora said, "but we can damn sure fight like he is."

"In a way, he is." Pyrrha looked down at the spilled coffee. "I'm sorry."

"For what? I was the one who dropped it." Nora pointed at Jaune. "Actually, this is your fault, Jaune! This is on you, buddy!" That got them laughing. Luckily, there was no one else at the park; others might not have taken the joke for what it was. "I'll go buy another one, Pyr. C'mon."

"Get me one too," Pyrrha told her. "I'll be along directly." The other two walked away, knowing. Pyrrha kissed her fingers, reached forward, and placed them on Jaune's boot. "Thank you, my love. I'll see you again." She winked at him, and thought she heard his laugh. "Just not for awhile yet, all right? Please have patience." Pyrrha lingered for another minute, once more studying Jaune's face, even if the sculptor had gotten his jawline wrong. Overhead, an airliner—she identified it instantly as an Airbus A340—flew overhead, taking off from the airport, then turning to set a northerly course; she saw the tricolor tail emblem of Air France.

She watched the airliner fly out of sight, then glanced back up at the statue. "That's not a bad idea, Jaune," she grinned, then laughed. "Not a bad idea at all."


	14. Silver Threads and Golden Needles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pyrrha's plan to get to France is revealed, but not before Ruby learns about her silver eyes...and Mercury and Emerald learn about Salem's plans.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew! For a bridge chapter, this took a lot more work than I thought, and it ended up being longer than I thought. Oh well--trying to get set up for the confrontation and climax of this story arc that we all know is on the way. This chapter also gives some more background on Mercury, Maria, and those weird silver eyes.

_The Cotta-Arc House_

_Algiers, Republic of Algeria_

_30 July 2001_

The Cotta-Arc household was asleep. It was just after midnight, and it had been a very long day for all of them—to say nothing of one of disappointment. Much to Ruby's surprise, when Ren, Nora, and Pyrrha returned, the latter looked surprisingly happy, even chipper—an emotion Ruby had rarely seen since Beacon. When she asked, Pyrrha had only said cryptically, "Night brings counsel," and had gone to bed. Ren and Nora did as well, and gradually so did everyone else, but Ruby. She stayed awake, even though fatigue tugged at her no less than anyone else, waiting for her uncle to come back. For the third time in the past thirty minutes, she called him. "C'mon, please…" She let it ring ten times, before it went to voicemail. Also for the third time, Ruby decided not to leave one. Qrow only checked his voicemail when it was a matter of life-and-death, and this wasn't…at least, not yet. Ruby tossed the phone onto the coffee table. "Motherfucking shit," she grumbled.

"You know, I didn't think you knew those words." Ruby looked up and saw Maria hobbling down the stairs. "You look so innocent and young. Ah well…guess I'm just getting old."

"Sorry," Ruby apologized.

"Why? You're a fighter pilot. I'd consider you abnormal if you didn't curse." Maria eased herself into a recliner and winced as her back popped alarmingly. "Blake is the cleanest Marine I've ever met; she doesn't use 'fuck' as a noun, verb, adjective _and_ adverb. And all of you don't drink very much, and don't smoke at all. We used to drink like fish and smoke like stoves."

"Uncle Qrow drinks a lot."

Maria nodded. "Too much. Tying one on now and then is good for you; getting drunk off your ass every night is just being a lush, plain and simple."

Ruby leaned back on the sofa. She had grown to like Maria. Far from being a load on Ruby Flight, she'd actually become a valuable member of it. "Were you like that when you were younger, Colonel?"

"Maria. We're off duty." Maria grinned. "Oh, I was a hellraiser. Drank way too much, smoked half a pack a day, took guys home and never called them back. I could tell you some stories, like that night in Port Said with that bull Faunus and that Egyptian girl fighter pilot…" She chuckled. "Well, your young ears aren't ready for such as that."

Ruby gave a quick nod. She supposed that, if she lived to be Maria's age, she might have some tangy tales for her grandchildren, but a threesome in Egypt would _not_ be one of them. "Don't you have children?"

Maria's eyebrows raised. "Good Lord, I've never shown you their pictures? I _am_ getting old." She began to get up, grunted, then sat back down. "I'll show you tomorrow. Don't feel like going back up those stairs. Anyway, yes, I have two children—son and daughter. Four grandchildren. My oldest grandchild commands the 1st Armored Division." She tapped her chin in thought. "Hmm. Wonder if Ironwood deployed him to Europe. Would be good to see him."

Ruby shook her head. "When did you find the time?"

Maria pointed to her eyes. "After this happened." She laughed. "I actually married my doctor! Of course, he didn't have a lot of choice, since he knocked me up. It worked out, though." Maria sighed wistfully. "Eddie gave me fifteen good years." At Ruby's unasked question, she explained. "Car accident. John—my son—he's a doctor too. Josefina went Army, if you can believe it. That's where Miguel, my grandson, got it from, God help him. I'm proud of him, though. Youngest Major General in the US Army since World War II. They all live in Texas. Assuming that old whore Cordovin doesn't kill me this time, I'll head back and see them."

"Why not just skip it?" Ruby asked. "You could get a flight out of here tomorrow."

Maria looked surprised. "And miss an opportunity to stick it to Cordo one last time? No way. Besides, this is the most fun I've had in years."

"Aren't you tired?"

Maria thumbed upstairs. "I'm rooming with your bunch, and your sister snores. Couldn't sleep anyway." She leaned closer. "Ruby, I'm going to tell you a secret. The object of life is to skid headfirst into the Pearly Gates, look up at St. Peter, and say 'What a ride!'"

They shared a laugh. Ruby shook her head in wonder. "I wish I was as confident as you."

"Kiddo, I'm old. Assuming you don't auger in with that flying of yours, or ram the wrong aircraft, you'll be just as crotchety and salty as me when you get to my age." Maria waggled a finger at her. "You know, you don't give yourself enough credit."

Ruby chuckled. "Thanks."

"Not a compliment."

Ruby's eyebrows beetled together in confusion. "Er…huh?"

"If I have to explain it to you, it'll defeat the purpose." Maria settled back in the recliner. "But if you're tired of not knowing anything, how about we discuss those silver eyes of yours…and mine?"

"I'd like that."

"Let's start with what you _do_ know," Maria said. "Tell me."

"That won't take long," Ruby admitted. "I don't know anything. Mom had them. Dad never said anything about it, other than they look like Mom's. I've seen pictures of our grandparents, on both sides, and none of them had silver eyes."

"I would've been surprised if they did," Maria told her. "You've never heard of the legends of silver-eyed warriors, whose eyes shone like mirrors, reflecting the light of the world onto darkness?"

Ruby's silver eyes shone, but with anticipation. "You're kidding!"

"Yes, I am," Maria snickered. Ruby's look changed to one of irritation. "I know, I know…I'm terrible. Okay, the truth…which is almost as good as some legendary superhero story." Maria pointed at her one decent eye. "Silver eyes are a genetic aberration that didn't appear until after World War III. Something about all the radiation in the air. Now, despite what you read in comic books, radiation doesn't give you super powers—it just kills you, slowly. However, scientists _did_ find some strange anomalies in children born _after_ the war—and in a few people who survived it. Radiation, in high doses, can be strong enough to actually change eye colors. Usually, that dose is enough to kill, but they found out in exceedingly rare cases where the person survives, it does more than that—it changes their DNA. Something about genetics, and having a really, _really_ strong immune system. Now tell me, Ruby, how often did your mother get sick?"

Ruby shrugged. "Beats me. She disappeared when I was three."

"Oh…that's right. Sorry." Maria was silent for a moment, then continued. "My guess would be that she almost _never_ got sick. The combination of the radiation effects and her genetic makeup not only changed her eye color to silver, but gave her exceptional eyesight." Maria smiled. "Now tell me, Ruby, can you see stars in the daytime?"

"Yep. Weiss doesn't believe me."

"I could too. I could identify aircraft at twenty miles. I imagine you can too. And here's the fun part! Combine that eyesight with superb reflexes—especially if you're already born with natural physical talent—and you are literally born and bred to be a fighter pilot."

"How do you know all of this?" Ruby wanted to know.

"My father did some research on it, after my eyes turned colors. When San Antonio was hit with a nuclear strike from Cuba, my family lived in Houston, so they escaped the fallout pattern—the missile aimed for Houston malfunctioned and broke up in the atmosphere. I was at Texas A&M, and I was out with some friends in College Station when the fallout started coming down. They died. I lived, despite being exposed to a lethal dose of radiation. I was sick as everything for six months, but I had no business surviving—much less finding out that I could now see the Big Dipper at high noon." Now it was Maria who shrugged. "Father put it down to the mercy of Almighty God, and my husband said that was as good an explanation as anything science could come up with. Some people take slight rads and die of cancer a decade later. Some people like me take enough rads to kill, and we're still here and thriving. Though that _was_ the reason I had to give up smoking." Maria spread her hands. "My doctors tell me I've got a 3 in 4 chance of developing a fatal cancer in the next ten years. So you can see why I don't really care what Cordo can do to me."

"Shit," Ruby breathed. "I wonder if that's true about me, too."

"Who knows?" Maria said. "I doubt it, personally. You got your silver eyes from your mama's DNA. I'd bet money that Summer Rose had the same experience I did." Ruby made a mental note to ask her father about that: Summer would've been about the same age as Adrian Cotta-Arc in 1962, maybe a little older.

"How many silver-eyed people have you met?" Ruby asked.

"You're the only one. Supposedly there have been some others. I've never met them." Maria levered herself out of the chair. "So there you go, Ruby Rose. Your silver eyes. Now you can go out and run into something else."

"So _that's_ how I was able to hit Cinder's F-22," Ruby mused. "Even though we were both going at high speed. I could see exactly where I wanted to be."

"Thus endeth the lesson," Maria concluded. She began heading towards the stairs, but as Ruby reached for her phone, someone knocked on the door. They looked at each other, unsure whether or not to answer the door, and the knocking became more insistent. As they started for the door, Terra came out of the sun room, where she, Saphron, and Adrian were sleeping, having given up their bedroom to Norn Flight. Terra tied on a bathrobe and went to the door, opening it.

Outside, Ruby saw two _gendarmes,_ and Qrow Branwen between them. The two policemen were carrying Qrow, whose head lolled, and was barely upright. One of the policemen said something in French, which Ruby didn't speak. Terra sighed and nodded, opening the door, and the two men carried Qrow into the house, and deposited him on the sofa. Then they talked to Terra for a few minutes, nodded at Ruby and Maria, and left.

Terra rubbed her eyes. "I'm sure this looks _great_ to the neighbors."

"What happened to him?" Ruby asked.

"The _gendarmes_ found him staggering up the street about three blocks away. He said something about Saphron, and they brought him here." Terra glanced at the door. "The senior policeman—his wife runs Adrian's daycare. They said they won't prosecute or anything; he wasn't being disorderly, just drunk."

"I'm sorry," Ruby said, staring at Qrow, now sprawled all over the couch. "I've never seen him this bad before." She went over and turned her uncle onto his side. "I'll take care of him, Terra. I'm really sorry about this."

"He's been through a lot." Maria tried to put the best face on it.

Terra nodded. "All right." She went and got a thick comforter and put it around him. Maria sat in the recliner. "I'll keep an eye on him," she said. "Gives me an excuse not to climb those stairs." Terra gave another nod and returned to the sun room. Ruby touched her uncle's shoulder, then went to bed as well.

* * *

_Mount Yamantau_

_Ural Mountains, Russian Dead Zone_

_30 July 2001_

Mount Yamantau had everything, Emerald Sustrai mused, including a gym. Several of them, actually. At the moment, as dawn reached the dense forests of the Urals, she and Mercury were the only ones using the largest one in the mountain warren. Mercury was punching and kicking a boxing bag; Emerald watched him, sitting on the apron of the ring. She leaned back against the ropes. "I hate being kept in the dark like this," she said into the silence.

"Yeah," Mercury agreed, delivering a hard side kick, "Cinder was a pain in the ass, but at least she kept us filled in." He stopped, took a breath. "Though I'm still pissed about her sending me out there to get possibly killed by Yang."

Emerald almost mentioned that he probably wouldn't have been set up, had he not murdered Ruth Lionheart, but thought better of it. She needed friends here, and Mercury was better than nothing. She wanted to like Salem, but there was something about the pale woman that scared her. "Can I ask you something?"

"You're gonna." Mercury went back to punching.

"Why did you come with us? Cinder and I?"

Mercury stopped, gave it some thought, and shrugged. "Seemed like the thing to do at the time." He delivered a solid right to the bag, making it sway.

"Excuse me?"

"You heard me." Mercury paused again, and wiped his brow. "My pops, he was a contract killer, you know? He'd hire out to anyone. Started off as a petty enforcer for the Mafia, then worked his way up to _sicario_ for the Medellin cartels. Name the target, Dad would take him out, no questions asked. He was good at it, and he figured his boy would be too. I learned to fly because it was a way to get away from him." He took a drink of water. "And then, the same night I killed him, you two showed up looking for someone with my exact skills. Just felt like it was meant to be—a little too much, really. I bet you and Cinder were watching me for awhile."

"Cinder was," Emerald admitted. "I didn't even know about it until that night."

He shrugged, and went back to practicing. "Doesn't matter. I was glad about it. Still am."

It was a minute before Emerald realized he wasn't saying anything further. "So that's it?"

"Yeah. What's your problem?"

Emerald made a face. "Well, I mean…there has to be _something_ you want from this, right?"

"Salem's promised us a place in her world. We win this thing, we're on top. What more do you want?" Mercury did a quick one-two punch. "Besides, free food, roof over our heads, get to fly hot fighters…can't ask for more than that."

"I…" Emerald stopped herself; it was hard to argue with that logic. "Cinder was the only family I ever had," she said instead. "She cared about me, taught me how to fly…but without her here…"

Mercury stopped, and walked over to her. "Wake up, Emerald. Cinder doesn't give a shit about you. Or me. Or anyone else but Cinder Fall."

Emerald bared her teeth. "You don't know what you're talking about."

Mercury only smiled back. "You're in denial, Em. And if that's going to cause you to freak out, then get lost. I'm busy." He turned around and walked back to the punching bag.

"You son of a bitch!" Emerald exploded. She came off the apron and threw herself at him, swinging. He turned, ducked her punch, and threw one of his own. Mercury was fast, but Emerald Sustrai had grown up hard as well; fighting was something she was good at. She blocked it, dodged a second, then fell into a fighting stance, lightly bouncing on the balls of her feet.

Mercury spread his arms wide. "Oh, I'm _so_ sorry you didn't have a mommy that hugged you enough." He put up his hands defensively. "But don't feel bad—I had a father who _hated_ me."

"Go fuck yourself," Emerald snarled.

He acted like he hadn't heard her, and she wasn't sure he had. "He never went easy on me," Mercury said, his expression distant. "Every day he was home, he beat me. Said it would toughen me up. I lost a fight at school, and he knocked out two of my teeth. He beat Mom, too. Beat her so much he finally killed her." Emerald dropped her stance in amazement. "So as soon as I got strong enough, I killed _him._ I beat him to death with these two hands." He raised his wrapped fists. "But you know, sometimes I thank the old bastard. He made me learn that I have to bite and scratch and do whatever it takes." He smiled lopsidedly. "You may not like it here without Cinder, Emerald, but I'm right where I'm supposed to be."

Emerald's reply—which would've actually been sympathetic; she knew her own share of abuse—was interrupted by ironic clapping coming from the doorway to the gym. They turned to see Tyrian Callows walk in, wearing his white flight suit, the Moisin-Nagant he'd taken at Darvaza slung over one shoulder. As usual, he wore his insane grin. "Oh dear, the world is so mean!" he mocked. "But now I'm a big bad man just like dear old dad!"

Mercury raised his fists and took a step forward. "How long were you standing there?"

"Oh, long enough to hear your tale of woe." Tyrian practically danced. "All you ever learned from your father was pain and violence, and you pretend that you hate it. But you _love_ it, don't you, Mercury Black? You're like me in that. If you're not loving what you're doing, then you're in the wrong field!" Tyrian leered at him. "But you're _not_ like me, because you won't admit it! You don't _embrace_ it!"

"You don't know shit, you nut!" Mercury threw a devastating kick at him, but Tyrian simply skipped backwards. As Mercury closed in, the Faunus' tail suddenly lashed out and took the human's feet out from under him. Mercury began to get up, only to have Tyrian straddle him, the tail's stinger waving all too close to his nose. "I don't know if you know this about scorpion Faunus," Tyrian snickered, "but we do produce venom—enough to kill, in high enough doses. Would you like to find out? Want to go meet Daddy?"

"Do you?" Tyrian glanced up. Emerald held a knife in her hand, ready to throw across her chest. "Mercury learned MMA. You were born with poison. Guess what I got trained in on the streets of Madrid, _cizanero._ " Tyrian grinned at her, then slowly stepped back. "Now piss off."

"But I haven't said farewell!" Tyrian insisted. "There's been a change of plans. Her Grace must act swiftly before the EU or Ironwood come to their senses and realize they should be working together. We can't have that, so the good Dr. Watts and me are being sent to Berlin…to prepare."

"For what?" Emerald asked.

"Tyrian!" Watts leaned through the doorway. "Quit messing about! It's time to go."

"Oh. Well, toodles." Tyrian strode towards Watts. "Do what makes you happy, children. Uncle Tyrian is begging you!" He began laughing uproariously as he left. "See you in September!"

* * *

_The Cotta-Arc House_

_Algiers, Republic of Algeria_

_30 July 2001_

The sunlight streamed into Qrow's eyes, and he threw his arm over them. The smell of coffee drifted into his nostrils. It got closer, and reluctantly, he moved his arm and opened his eyes. The headache began instantly. Qrow counted himself lucky: he rarely got nausea from his hangovers, but headaches were a different story, along with his mouth tasting like he had drank a sewer and his eyes feeling like, as he'd once described to Taiyang and Summer, like two mad dogs' buttholes. "How the hell did I end up back here?"

"The local cops," Yang said, holding out the coffee mug. As he took the coffee, Qrow noticed in passing that Yang had borrowed one of Saphron's shirts, which was too small in the bust for her and left her ballooning out of it. From the way Oscar did his best to look at everything but Yang, he wasn't the only one who had noticed. Qrow took a drink, then felt around in his pockets for his flask. "Looking for this?" Yang handed it to him, upside down. "Ruby already poured it all out, along with every other drop of booze in this house. I helped. With pleasure." If there had ever been any doubt that Yang was Taiyang's and Raven's, it was gone now, Qrow thought: the blazing eyes were pure Tai, the tone of voice pure Raven.

Qrow almost said that his nieces had no right to do that, but thought better of it. "What time is it?"

"Almost noon."

"Shit." Qrow managed to get himself to a sitting position. "Can I at least have some damn Tylenol?"

"Sure." Yang handed him the bottle. She sat on the arm of the couch. "While you were out, and since Saph and Terra are at work, we decided it was high time to tell Pyr, Nora and Ren about what JINN told us."

"How did they take it?"

"It changes nothing," Pyrrha said, walking into the room. "The stakes are higher, that's all." Ruby walked in behind her, along with Weiss, Oscar and Maria, bearing plates of sandwiches. "Ren and Nora went out to do some shopping with Blake in the Casbah." Maria was holding Adrian, who stared at Qrow as babies like to do when confronted with something they're not sure of.

Qrow nodded, shakily stood, took a long drink of coffee, and headed for the stairs. "Where are you going?" Ruby snapped.

He glared at her. "I don't feel like eating. And watch your damn mouth, kid."

"Sit down," Ruby ordered.

Qrow pointed at her. "You don't get to give me orders, Ruby."

"But I do," Pyrrha said. Her green eyes were hard. "In Tehran, you promised me you'd never get drunk again—"

"On duty," Qrow interrupted.

"It doesn't matter. You went out drinking in your uniform. Conduct to the prejudice of good order and discipline, _Major._ Conduct to bring discredit on the armed services. Both court-martial offenses, as you know." There was steel in Pyrrha's voice. "In Tehran, you said I was the next senior officer. Well, I am using that authority to relieve you of any and all command duties, Major Branwen. The only reason I didn't ask Legrand to toss you in prison was because we need you too much."

Qrow's mouth dropped open. Involuntarily, he glanced at Yang. She shrugged. "Don't look at me, Unc. I'd help them put the cuffs on."

Ruby took a step forward, her hands out, her tone softening. "Uncle Qrow, please. This has to stop. You can't just keep drinking yourself into blackouts! It's going to kill you!" Her silver eyes were shimmering with tears. "Mom wouldn't want this, Uncle Qrow. Please. Just…stop."

"And neither would my sister." Everyone turned and gaped at Weiss. "What? Did you think I hadn't figured it out?"

"God." Qrow leaned heavily on the staircase rail. "What, you want me to take the pledge? Go to AA?"

"I could be your sponsor," Maria said. She tickled Adrian. "Yes, I could!" she cooed. "I've been there, haven't I, _nino?_ "

"But for now, just come down and sit with us, okay?" Qrow regarded Ruby, and blinked. For a moment, it was Summer Rose gazing back at him. He found himself walking back down the stairs; just like Short Stack, he couldn't refuse those eyes. He deposited himself back on the couch. Ruby sat next to him, as if her warmth could change him by proximity; Yang gripped his shoulder with her metal hand, but with affection. Weiss and Maria sat on the floor, while Pyrrha took the recliner. Another glance at her told Qrow that he would get no sympathy whatsoever from Pyrrha Nikos.

And, as much as he hated to admit it, she was very much right. "All right," Qrow growled. "I'm sitting down. Now what is it you wanted to talk about?" He was going to make a fighting retreat, at least.

"Our plan to get into France," Pyrrha said. "I have an idea. I wanted to sleep on it, and then I talked it over with Ren and Nora this morning. Ren said it was a terrible idea; Nora loved it."

"Great," Yang smiled. "It probably involves strafing something, if Nora likes it."

"That…could be part of it," Pyrrha had to admit. "It is sort of a 'no-going-back' kind of idea. As in, if we get caught, I don't think Ironwood _or_ Arashikaze is going to help us. In fact, they're likely to pretend they've never heard of us."

"Liking it so far," Ruby quipped.

"All right," Pyrrha began. "With Cordovin—"

"That bitch," Maria put in, then put a hand over her mouth. She pointed at Adrian. "Don't you _dare_ repeat that."

"—with Cordovin," Pyrrha continued, "only aircraft with her express permission have clearance to pass through the patrol lines. And of all of us, only Weiss will get that permission. So…I suggest that Weiss go ahead and _get_ that permission."

Yang held up a hand. "Whoa, Pyr. I know where you're going with this. Weiss gets the transponder code, then we all play Blue Angels and fly so close that it looks like one blip on the radar. That _might_ work with ground radar, but not with the AWACS—and even with ground radar, we could get away with two or three aircraft with that trick, at the most."

"I know. Hear me out." Pyrrha grabbed a piece of paper that Adrian had been doodling on, one of the child's crayons, and flipped over the paper. Quickly, she scrawled down the flights—names and aircraft:

_RUBY FLIGHT_

_Ruby Rose/Maria Calavera F-16_

_Weiss Schnee Typhoon_

_Blake Belladonna F-14_

_Yang Xiao Long F-23 (stealthy)_

_Qrow Branwen F-117 (stealthy)_

_NORN FLIGHT_

_Pyrrha Nikos F-22 (stealthy)_

_Oscar Pine F-18_

_Lie Ren J-10_

_Nora Valkyrie A-10_

"So three of our aircraft are stealthy enough to slip past radar—the Nighthawk will even get past the AWACS."

"Maybe," Qrow corrected her. "A sharp AWACS operator can pick me up, if they know what they're doing. Sometimes ground radar too. And we know the French have got AWACS over by Corsica."

Pyrrha took a deep breath. "I know. Which is why I propose two courses of action. First, we tell Legrand what we're doing."

"And he has us thrown in the brig," Oscar finished. "No disrespect, ma'am, but there's no way we're going to convince him that we're on some secret mission."

"We don't have to!" Ruby said excitedly. "Look, we can contact Arashikaze! She calls him and tells him what we're doing!"

"That should work," Pyrrha replied with a smile. It was better than her original idea, which was to show Legrand JINN.

"And he tells the AWACS to look the other way!" Yang exclaimed. Ruby's enthusiasm was infectious.

"Even better." Pyrrha's smile widened. "Terra can fake an emergency with the radar. Legrand redeploys the AWACS south to help with air traffic control. We slip through in the confusion."

"So far so good," Qrow said. Mulishly, he'd decided to be the devil's advocate. "But there's ground radar in Corsica, _and_ France."

"I've thought of that," Pyrrha said. "And if you thought telling Legrand about our mission was crazy, you're going to love this." She bent over, rubbing her forehead. "Yang, Qrow, and myself—our aircraft are stealthy enough to get past ground radar. We'll have to chance that the French radar operators are bored and aren't expecting stealth aircraft. Weiss, you'll fly formation with Nora—her A-10 can blend in with your radar signature, and your Typhoon handles well at low speed." Weiss groaned; that meant close, wingtip flying with the very slow A-10. "That leaves Oscar, Ren, Ruby and Blake, so those four will use airliners." Pyrrha looked sheepish. "I checked the internet last night, and there's four flights from points in West Africa to France about the time of day we want to get across, so you can use them…" Her voice trailed off at the aghast expressions on their faces.

"Mind explaining how we do that?" Maria said.

"Well…you…you fly underneath the airliner. Close enough that you show up as one return on the radar, but not so close that you get caught in their jetwash and collide. Which would be, well…bad. As soon as we get inside French airspace, when the radars are hopefully _not_ looking for rogue fighters flying around their airspace, we fly on to…wherever we were going to go. We have to think about that, too, because we're not going to have the fuel to make it to Poland in one hop, but maybe we can get a tanker…" Everyone was still looking at her as if Pyrrha had lost her mind, and she wasn't sure they were wrong. "Um…well…you see, Jaune and I watched this movie one time, it was a French movie with Mirages in it, and they did that…" Still no response. "And when we saw Jaune's statue last night, it gave me the idea…"

"First of all, Jaune has a statue in Algiers?" Pyrrha nodded to Yang's question. "Okay, I have to see ol' Jauney before we leave. And second, that's nucking futs, Pyr." Yang remembered Adrian being in the room.

"The only other idea I had was to get Legrand to load us up with HARMs or strafe the radars," Pyrrha said.

"That's definitely worse," Weiss agreed.

They all sat there, processing the plan. Suddenly Qrow slapped his knee, startling them. "I love this plan! I'm happy to be a part of it." He put his arms around his nieces. "When do we start?"

* * *

_Okba Ben Nafi Airbase_

_Near Benghazi, Socialist Libyan Arab Republic_

_30 July 2001_

Adam Taurus swirled his glass of arak, watching it go around the glass. It was a strong drink, and he was only going to drink one, while he contemplated what to do next.

Getting into Libya had not been difficult: his name was known to the Qaddafi regime, which provided a home to several "freedom fighter" groups around the world—what others might call terrorist groups, depending on their point of view, Adam mused. The White Fang was one of those groups, using camps in the Libyan desert to train new soldiers. As a result, there were still Fang cells in Libya, including Benghazi; undoubtedly the European Union would eventually demand Qaddafi shut them down, and the Libyan dictator, who was getting old, would probably comply. By that time, however, Adam Taurus would be elsewhere. For now, he would use their facilities.

He regarded himself in the mirror of the officers' club, which was mostly deserted in late afternoon, though the Libyan Air Force pilots who used it would probably be arriving for dinner soon. Technically, Muslims were not supposed to drink alcohol, but apparently the Libyan MiG and Mirage pilots had decided Allah made an exception for fighter pilots. In the mirror, he saw the shock of red hair, the horns sticking upwards from his mask, giving him a satanic look. He still wore his black flight suit, despite the heat of the day and the lack of working air conditioning. "You're a damn fool," he whispered to himself. Adam knew that, if he had any brains, he'd get back in Moonslice, return to Beirut, and somehow try to catch up to Cinder and Neo. Not because of any affection for either of them: Cinder was great in bed, and he liked her—but he didn't love her. He never would. The reason he should leave was because his current plan, or what passed for it, verged on lunacy.

Adam Taurus only loved one person on the planet. Until Blake was either his again, or she was dead, she would torment every moment of his life. She teased him in his dreams; he found himself staring into space, remembering her, during the day. Even when he was making love to Cinder, he kept seeing Blake's face on the other woman, no matter how hard he tried not to. Adam knew he was obsessed, to the point of insanity, but he also knew that he could not stop it. When Blake made the run from Algiers to France, he would catch her and either convince her to follow him, or more likely, kill her. Even if he had to go through all of her friends to do so, even if it cost him his own life.

He wondered if it was actually love that motivated him, or simply because Blake was the possession that had gotten away—and if he couldn't own her, no one would.

He downed the arak and slammed it on the bar, making the bartender jump. He was about to order another when another Faunus walked in. He was a fennec Faunus, short with huge ears, reminding Adam of Fennec Albain. He also openly wore a White Fang jerkin. The fennec spotted Adam and walked over, and came to attention. "High Leader. We've found her."

"Blake?" Adam turned on his barstool.

"Yes, High Leader," the fennec confirmed. "She was spotted by one of our sisters in Algiers, not more than an hour ago, shopping in the Casbah."

Adam smiled, and clasped the Faunus' shoulder. "Good work. I want her trailed."

"Already done, High Leader. Do you want us to try and recover her?"

That brought Adam up short. It could be done: the White Fang cell in Algiers was still loyal. They could storm whatever hidey-hole Blake was in, seize her, and kill the rest. Then he dismissed it: at Beacon, the pilots of Ruby Flight had shown themselves to be resourceful, and they might be able to defeat a White Fang assault. Moreover, that would attract the attention of the French Army, and it was worse than even odds that they'd stop the White Fang long before they reached the Libyan border. Not even Qaddafi would go that far: he was trying to get back in the good graces of France. "No," Adam told him. "Just keep an eye out for her, and trail her if she leaves—discreetly. If she heads to Boufarik or the international airport, I want to know within the hour. Understood?"

"Done," the fennec nodded confidently. Adam tossed a few euros onto the bar and followed the other Faunus out the door, wondering if he was only fooling himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While radiation is powerful enough to change eye color, it would invariably kill someone with that high of a dose-it did at Chernobyl. Still, this is a story, and there had to be some explanation, and in a "realistic" AU, "A wizard did it" isn't a good explanation. During their conversation, Maria quotes Doc Holliday about the meaning of life.
> 
> Pyrrha's plan-which she lampshades-is based on a scene in the French fighter pilot movie "Sky Fighters." I originally were going to have Ruby Flight go in and take out the ground radars with HARM antiradar missiles, but then I had to ask myself 1) where would they get the HARMs and 2) blowing up radars on French sovereign soil would have half the French Air Force on them. So I went with this idea instead. "Sky Fighters" actually came out in 2005, but if we can accept a universe where "Top Gun" and GRIMM exist simutaneously, I think we can move the release date forward to 2000 so Jaune and Pyrrha can watch it.
> 
> Qrow is evidently a fan of Ghostbusters, since he directly quotes Bill Murray. Sounds like a Qrow thing to do...


	15. Come Together

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> he plan goes into action as Ruby and Norn Flights try to sneak into Europe. 
> 
> But Cordovin's not finished yet...and Salem has some plans, too. And Adam's still out there...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A shorter chapter than the tomes I've been posting recently. I honestly thought we'd be getting to the big Blake/Yang vs. Adam fight this time around, to say nothing of Everyone Else vs. Cordovin, but this chapter was starting to get long, so I decided to save that for the next time. Probably a big chapter coming up!
> 
> I had to change Terra and Adrian's little distraction; I never quite understood how Adrian, who is about two at the most, could know what a distraction was.

_Algiers Houari Boumediene International Airport_

_Algiers, Republic of Algeria_

_31 July 2001_

_0810 Hours Local_

"You want me to do _what?"_ Etienne Legrand exclaimed.

Pyrrha Nikos was a brave woman, but even she wilted a little under his wrath. "We realize it's highly irregular—"

"Highly irregular? My God, woman, it's lunatic!" Legrand was halfway out of his chair, and Ruby was glancing nervously at the door, in case anyone else in the headquarters building could hear him. "I know that you're on some sort of secret mission, and you need to get into Europe. But _you_ know that my hands are tied by General Cordovin's orders! And now you come into my office with some sort of cockeyed plan that involves ending my career, getting court-martialed, and sent to Devil's Island!"

"Um…I thought that was closed," Oscar put in.

"They'll reopen it just for me!" Legrand thundered.

"Colonel, please!" Pyrrha pleaded. She nodded towards the door. "If anyone hears you, we'll _all_ be going to Devil's Island."

Legrand calmed down—some—and sat back down. "Diverting the E-3 away from its duties is bad enough. Telling me you're going to sabotage the radar here is even worse."

"Not sabotage," Ruby replied. "Just temporarily shut down."

"It's the same thing." Legrand shook his head. "By all rights, I should call the _gendarmes_ , have Terra Cotta-Arc arrested, and have the lot of you thrown in the brig. Instead, I'm going to chalk this up to temporary insanity and tell you to leave, and give you 12 hours to leave Algeria." His tone softened. "Look, I don't like this any more than you do. But if you fly to Gibraltar, then on to Great Britain or Menagerie, you might have a better chance."

"The patrols there are even tighter than down here." Blake's ears were back in anger. "And it takes time we don't have."

Ruby took out her cellphone. It was time to play their ace card. "Colonel, I can get the Deputy Director of the CIA on the phone in five minutes. I don't think you want me to do that." She tried to sound as threatening as she could. _Gad, how does Arashikaze do this? She's shorter than me, and when she makes a threat, people crap themselves. I sound like a five year old stomping their feet._

It didn't work. Legrand only shrugged. "Go ahead. What's she going to do to me?" Ruby almost said that Arashikaze would have Legrand killed, but then thought that Legrand might not be intimidated. If the colonel was to suddenly turn up dead in an Algiers back alley, there would be questions asked, and it risked a major international incident. Arashikaze probably would not be quite willing to go that far. Or worse, she _might._

Oscar sighed. He reached into the duffel bag at his feet, unzipped it, and pulled out JINN's console. "Oscar, what the hell—" Ruby began.

"It's the only way." Oscar set the console on Legrand's desk. "Colonel, as you know, my name is Oscar Pine. What you might not know is that my father was Captain Oscar Ozpin. You probably know the name."

Legrand gave him a nod. "I do. I met your father a few times, when I went through Vytal Flag." He leaned closer and nodded again. "Now I see the family resemblance, but I fail to see what that has to do with this."

"I bring it up because he invented something." Oscar pointed at the console. "It's a device that can access every bit of information around the world. People have died to get this thing. My father's wishes were that we get this to General Ironwood. It might be the only chance we have to stop the GRIMM." Legrand was silent, so Oscar continued. "Sir, with respect. I'm risking my life and career just telling you this, but I'm not my father—I believe that sometimes you _have_ to trust someone." Oscar took a breath and plunged on. "There is someone controlling the GRIMM, Colonel. I don't want to go into more details, otherwise the CIA might just have us all killed. But that someone—they're watching what's happening in Europe. Ironwood and the EU at each other's throats…that's just what they want. This device might just be what defuses the situation. Maybe. But it gives us a chance to stop what's coming. Because if we go into this divided, Colonel, the GRIMM won't stop at the Vistula or the Oder or the Rhine. They won't even stop at the Seine." Oscar took a quick look at the others in the room—Pyrrha, Blake and Ruby. Blake was pale, her eyes wide and ears flattened at Oscar's temerity. Ruby looked stunned. Pyrrha, however, was smiling.

Legrand was silent. "You sound a lot like your father," he commented. "All right. I believe you, Ensign. But how do I know you didn't just borrow the Cotta-Arcs' GameBoy and you're bluffing? That looks like my son's."

"Colonel, if I turn this thing on…again, people have died for it."

Legrand hesitated. "I don't know…"

Ruby was the one who acted now. She spoke one word: "JINN."

The console instantly came to life. The hologram activated, and Legrand nearly fell out of his seat. Slowly, JINN coalesced, then slowly looked at all of them, as if trying to remember who they were, then turned to Legrand. "Facial recognition software activated," she intoned. Pyrrha surreptitiously locked the door; luckily, there was no window in it. Then JINN smiled. "Good afternoon, Lieutenant Colonel Etienne Legrand. I am JINN. What can I do for you?"

Legrand's mouth opened and closed a few times before he could speak. "I, ah…who…what are you?"

"I am the Joint Inter-National Network, codenamed JINN. I am a storage conduit for 90% of the known information of the world. You may ask me any question."

Legrand shook his head. "That's incredible."

"Thank you for the compliment," JINN replied. "I am pleased that you find me interesting. Do you have a question, Colonel?"

Legrand rubbed his chin. "Who am I?"

JINN paused for about thirty seconds. "Etienne Legrand. Lieutenant Colonel, French Air Force, currently assigned Armee de l'Air liasion office, Algeria. Born January 5, 1964, in Ste.-Mere Eglise, Normandy, France. Parents are Louis Legrand and Jeanette Legrand, nee d'Alembord. Educated St. Cyr Military Academy. Joined Armee de l'Air in May 1986. Posted to Escadrille 2 at Nancy, EC 3, Djibouti. Graduate, Vytal Flag, 1996. Nine confirmed victories. Married to Chloe Legrand, nee Clostermann. Two children: sons Claude and Alois."

"My God," Legrand breathed.

"While I appreciate the compliment, I'm afraid I'm merely a hologram," JINN corrected.

"Thanks, JINN. Can you shut off now?" Oscar requested.

"Certainly, master. Goodbye." JINN gave her salaam-like bow, and derezzed. Oscar made a mental note to ask why she'd addressed him as master at a later date; JINN had never done that before.

Legrand sat back in his chair and took a few moments as Oscar put JINN away. "That much power…I'm not sure I shouldn't grab that and toss it in the ocean. And why is she naked?" He stared at the console for another long moment. "All right. I will divert the E-3. But there's no reason to disable the radar. I'll simply give the order."

"What about Cordovin?" Blake asked.

"I'll tell her we have actionable intelligence, provided by the CIA, that there may be a GRIMM attack soon on Algeria from Chad. They've been having GRIMM troubles lately anyway, so it's not entirely a lie." He laughed. "I can't believe I'm doing this. What's the rest of your plan to get into my country—" He held up a hand. "On second thought, don't tell me. I'm afraid to ask."

* * *

_Office of the Commanding Officer, French Military Mission_

_Boufarik Airbase, Republic of Algeria_

_31 July 2001_

_0815 Hours Local_

Much to Weiss' chagrin, the guard at Cordovin's office was one of the overofficious ones that had been at the base two nights before. He stood foursquare at the office door, a six foot five mountain of a senior sergeant. " _Sergent-chef,"_ she addressed him, "I must speak with General Cordovin immediately. For the third time."

"And for the third time, the answer is no, Hauptmann."

Weiss turned on her best glacial stare, and tried to use the same cutting tone her sister used when annoyed. "Sergeant, I would remind you that I am an officer and I outrank you. I suggest you let me into the general's office, or your next posting will be Haiti or Chad."

The sergeant shook his head. "If I disobey General Cordovin's orders, Hauptmann, my next posting will be at the bottom of the Mediterranean. Now I must ask you to leave. For the third time."

Terra Cotta-Arc, who had accompanied Weiss on base because of her status as a civilian contractor, decided it was time to take drastic measures. She bent forward and whispered in Adrian's ear; the infant had come with them, in the hopes of appealing to Cordovin's maternal instincts—assuming she had any. "Adrian," she said softly, "no cookie." Adrian looked at his mother in horror. She shook her head sadly. His face screwed up, tears squeezed out of his eyes, and he began to bawl.

The sergeant's eyes bulged. He put his hands out. "Please be quiet, baby!" He looked frantically from Adrian, to Terra, to Weiss. "Why is he crying? What's wrong?"

"He's just going to miss Hauptmann Schnee so much!" Terra said, piping her own eyes. "They've become so very attached in the past two days, you know. You know how babies are!" Adrian was now practically screaming. The sergeant held out his arms in panic. Terra let him hold Adrian, who liked that even less. In desperation, the sergeant began to rock the baby, trying to calm him down. Weiss pressed her fingernails into her hands, trying not to laugh.

The office door burst open. "What in the hell is going on out here?" Caroline Cordovin exploded.

"Ma'am!" The sergeant came to attention, though the effect was somewhat lost with a baby in his arms. "I apologize, ma'am! The baby is crying, ma'am!"

"Then for the love of God, get the brat out of here!" She noticed Weiss. "Can I help you, Hauptmann Schnee?"

Weiss stepped past the flustered sergeant. "Yes, General. I've decided to accept your offer and return home."

Cordovin regarded her for a moment. "Well. I am relieved that you have come to your senses, Hauptmann. Knowing that you'll be returning to your family just warms my old heart." Weiss thought the general sounded genuine, though she wondered if Cordovin had actually been issued a heart.

"It's time I got my act together and went back to my roots," Weiss told her, laying it on thick.

"Certainly! I look forward to seeing you follow in your sister's footsteps."

"Absolutely," Weiss said, with an utterly fake smile.

"Come in, come in." Cordovin spared the sergeant a withering, I'll-deal-with-you-later glance, and shut the door behind Weiss.

"Oh, look!" Terra said. She held out a cookie she had retrieved from her purse. Adrian instantly calmed down and began to munch on it. The sergeant sighed in relief and handed him back to Terra.

* * *

_Mount Yamantau_

_Ural Mountains, Russian Dead Zone_

_30 May 2001_

_1030 Hours Local (0830 Hours Algerian Time)_

Salem regarded a map of eastern Europe. The door to her conference room opened and she glanced up. It was one of her guards, who came to attention and saluted. "What is it, Comrade Lieutenant?" The old _comrade_ came to her lips almost unconsciously, a longtime habit, and Salem was amused by it.

"A report from Cryptography, Mistress Salem." He stepped into the room and handed her the handwritten note. "That is the second contact in a week."

Salem didn't reply, but moved the map aside for another, this one of Central Asia. Her finger tapped at Almaty. "We noted the first signal here," she mused. "And now a second in Algiers." She traced the distance between Almaty and Darvaza, then looked up. "Our agents identified Ruby Flight in Incirlik, yes?" The lieutenant nodded. Her fingers then went from Incirlik to Algiers, and she nodded. "That's it. They're trying to get past the EU blockade." Salem straightened up and put her hands behind her back. Most of her GRIMM forces in Africa were concentrated in the Sudan, based in the eastern Sahel—remnants of the Soviet advisors placed in Africa before the Third World War, and now loyal to her. Their numbers were nowhere near what she had in Europe, or even North America, but they were enough to keep up hit-and-run raids on Egypt and Israel, as distractions and keep the area destabilized. "We still have a Nevermore down there, do we not?"

"We have two, Mistress. We sent the other two months ago. You asked that they be held in reserve."

"Ah, yes, that's correct. No longer. Send a message to our forces in the Sahel. Dispatch both Nevermore to Algiers immediately."

The lieutenant saluted. "At once, Mistress. Do we send them after Ruby Flight?"

Salem smiled. "No. Algiers itself. Flatten the city. I don't want to stop Ruby Flight, Comrade; I want them to succeed. The chaos of two Nevermores assaulting Algiers should offer plenty of opportunity for distraction. And with the French trying to enforce the EU blockade, their airborne radars will be nowhere near Algeria. The Nevermore will be on top of Algiers before they're detected. Dismissed, Comrade Lieutenant, and thank you."

"Mistress." He saluted again and left.

Salem bent over her maps again, and her smile grew larger.

* * *

_Okba Ben Nafi Airbase_

_Near Benghazi, Socialist Libyan Arab Republic_

_31 July 2001_

_0930 Hours Local_

Adam was checking the ammunition feeds for Moonslice's twin twenty millimeter cannon when he spotted the four senior members of the White Fang cell jogging across the tarmac towards him. He closed the access panel and regarded them. The fennec Faunus—Baha, Adam remembered—came to attention, breathlessly. Adam waited patiently. "High Leader," he finally puffed out, "the Belladonna girl is on the move. She was spotted leaving the airport, returning to the residence she has been staying at, then returning to the airport—wearing her flight suit, not her uniform."

Adam forced himself to be calm. "Was she alone?"

"No, High Leader. The other members of her flight were with her—the short one with red hair, the tall redhead, the Chinese male, the short redhead, a young man, and the blonde with large breasts. We did not see the older man who drinks heavily, nor the Schnee heiress."

Adam laughed at the description of Yang Xiao Long. He put his hand on Baha's shoulder. "Well done, my friend. Notify the base commander—I will need to take off immediately." Moonslice was already fully armed and fueled.

"I already took the liberty of doing so, High Leader." Baha paused. "There is something more. The French AWACS is moving south. The French would still have ground radar to detect you, but—"

"But the ground radar would be cluttered by sea return," Adam finished. This was perfect. He'd worried about the French E-3F picking him up as he searched for Blake. His hope was that the radar controllers onboard would either be distracted by whatever Ruby Flight would be trying, or that the sea return—the reflection of the waves of the ocean—would hide Moonslice, which already had a small radar signature. This was even better…to the point that Adam worried it was a trap. Maybe Blake had heard about _his_ presence in Libya; it wasn't impossible. Whatever the case, he would willingly step into the trap. As the old Chinese saying went, one can lure the tiger from the mountain, but killing the tiger was another thing entirely. "Excellent," he finally said. "Thank you again, Baha."

"We'll be going with you, High Leader." This from another fennec—Fatima, Baha's sister. The other two Faunus, a hyena and a scorpion, nodded as well.

"That's not necessary," Adam insisted. "This is a personal matter. And in any case, you're not trained as pilots." He hesitated. "Are you?"

"We don't have a lot of training," Fatima told him.

"How many hours do you have, Sister Fatima?"

"Twenty hours," she answered. He looked to the hyena. "Fifteen," he answered proudly. Adam disguised his thoughts. _They'll be massacred._ "What do you fly?" he asked.

"The Libyans have granted us four MiG-17s, High Leader."

"You do realize that you will be fighting ace pilots," Adam said. He found himself oddly concerned about them. Normally, Adam understood that sacrifices had to be made for the good of all Faunus, but this was different; this was his own fight.

"Then let our deaths serve your purpose, and the White Fang," Baha replied. "Death to traitors, High Leader. The Belladonna girl must die."

Adam looked at him, then came to attention and saluted. "As you say, Baha. Get your aircraft ready; we depart in thirty minutes."

* * *

_Algiers Houari Boumediene International Airport_

_Algiers, Republic of Algeria_

_31 July 2001_

_1202 Hours Local_

Ruby pulled the stick back and grinned as _Crescent Rose_ rose into the air. She circled once around the airport and then throttled back, flying sedately northeast. She dipped the wing and saw Weiss' _Myrtenaster_ sitting on the tarmac, along with Nora's _Magnhild_ and Ren's _Stormflower,_ the A-10 looking clunky against the sleek Typhoon and the J-10. Somewhere in one of the hangars was Qrow's F-117; he would be the last to leave, after dark. Weiss and Nora would leave in fifteen minutes.

So far, the plan was working. Blake and Yang had taken off first, two hours earlier, to rendezvous with an Air Algerie Airbus A330, flying from Algiers to Paris; Yang would fly below and behind the airliner, trusting in the F-23's stealth to avoid detection; when they got closer to Corsica, she would get down to low level and use the island's mountains for cover. Blake would stay beneath the airliner until it reached the French coast, and then drop down and rejoin Yang somewhere over northwestern Italy.

Pyrrha and Oscar had taken off an hour earlier, using the same tactic—though Oscar's rendezvous was with an Air France A340, and they were headed due north. They would break off at the French coast as well, then rendezvous with Blake and Yang.

Ruby and Maria were proceeding alone, northeast. Their target was a Libyan Arab Airlines Boeing 727 flying from Benghazi to Marseille. She would also break off over Corsica and head into northwest Italy

Weiss and Ren would have the easiest time of it. Weiss had managed to convince Cordovin that Lie Ren, as a Chinese national, was not bound by the blockade, and Cordovin—who felt expansive around a Schnee—had relented. The two would fly north openly—with Nora's A-10 nestled between them, all three aircraft showing as a single blip…hopefully. Weiss and Ren were scheduled to land at Salon-de-Provence; Nora would slip away for Italy as well. Qrow would fly straight to Italy, his Nighthawk invisible-again, hopefully.

Aside from Weiss and Ren, the rest of them would land at Aviano airbase in northern Italy, which was a USAF base; supposedly they would be safe there. A quick refueling, a message to Ironwood, and with some luck they would be able to fly the rest of the way to Ironwood's headquarters in Poland. The EU would be incensed; the French would be enraged, but there would be little either could do about it. At least, that's what Ruby hoped.

It was, as Legrand said, a cockeyed plan, and there were a thousand things that could go wrong. There had been a few times she'd thought about just canceling it and trying Legrand's idea of flying to Britain. She'd put it to a vote, and everyone—even Qrow—had voted to go through with it. Ruby wondered if Strike Flight, and her mother and father, had ever tried something this crazy. Either way, it was going to be one hell of a story to tell her grandkids, assuming she lived that long.

"How are you doing back there?" Ruby asked Maria.

"Great," Maria replied happily. "Any day I stick it to Cordo is a good one. She is going to be so _pissed!"_ The older woman cackled. "Though I'm not enamored of having this hussy hologram in my lap."

Ruby laughed. Oscar had requested that JINN ride with Ruby and Maria; he worried that his flying skills were not up to the same standard as the others, and just in case he crashed, he wanted JINN to be safe. Ruby thought he was being silly, and wondered what was the real reason: she noticed Oscar had been very quiet after they had left Legrand's office. She wondered if it was because Legrand had known Ozpin and compared Oscar to him, or that JINN had suddenly addressed Oscar as her master.

"Well, don't turn her on, and it should be fine."

"What's your flight plan say?" Maria asked. "I assumed you filed one."

"Yep. We're headed back to Incirlik, same as everyone but Weiss and Ren. Hopefully nobody notices or cares that we all took off at later times. Cordovin's probably just happy she's getting rid of us, so she probably doesn't even care."

"That old bag thinks she's won," Maria laughed. "She's probably eating bon-bons and sipping sherry in her office right now."

* * *

_Office of the Commanding Officer, French Military Mission_

_Boufarik Airbase, Republic of Algeria_

_31 July 2001_

_1210 Hours Local_

Caroline Cordovin leaned back in her chair, savoring the taste of the bon-bon. She wished she could see the look on Maria Calavera's face when Weiss Schnee told her that the former heiress of the Schnee could go back to Europe, but the former GRIMM Reaper could not. It was enough that she considered having Calavera brought to her office to gloat over, but she dismissed that idea; Maria could get violent when she was denied, and that stupid skull cane of hers would hurt.

She reached forward and punched a button on her telephone. "Sergeant Nubuck! Go down to the officers' club and fetch me back a bottle of sherry."

"Yes, General, but…uh…there's something going on." Nubuck's voice was hesitant; he was already in Cordovin's doghouse for the incident with the baby earlier.

Cordovin waited, then sighed, and got to her feet. She stomped out into the outer office. "Since you don't feel it's important to tell me, I suppose I must come out here to find out."

Nubuck looked apologetic, and handed her a piece of paper. "Boufarik Tower just reported this, ma'am. It's probably nothing," he said, trying to reassure her.

Cordovin snatched the paper out of his hands, stared at him at a second like she had heard a donkey bray in her office, and scanned the paper. Her fingers tightened around it. Then she pushed past the sergeant and grabbed his phone, punching in a number.

"Boufarik Tower, Lieutenant Meroune speaking." Cordovin knew Meroune, a very attractive Faunus lieutenant with pink hair; the general still wasn't sure exactly what kind of Faunus Meroune was.

"Lieutenant, this is General Cordovin. I just received your message from a few minutes ago. Can you confirm that these Ruby and Norn Flights took off with staggered flight times?"

"Yes, General." Meroune paused as she checked the figures. "Ruby Three and Four took off about two hours ago; Norn Lead and Norn Two about an hour ago. Ruby Lead just took off a few minutes ago. As far as I know, the others—Ruby Two, Norn Three and Four, and Crow 13—are still at Boumediene."

Cordovin was quiet for a moment. Ruby Two and Norn Three were Weiss Schnee and Lie Ren, that much she knew; she'd checked that. "Did the others file a flight plan?"

"Yes, ma'am. They are headed for Incirlik."

That made sense, Cordovin thought. Calavera wasn't going to give up so easily, so she would probably try her luck at getting into Europe through Eastern Europe—a very iffy proposition, with the GRIMM, but she put nothing past her rival. "Lieutenant, do you know who Colonel Calavera is and who she's flying with?"

In the tower, Meroune rolled her eyes. There are few secrets on a base, and Cordovin's encounter with Calavera had made the rounds quickly. Cordovin was not well-liked, so the base staff had quietly taken pleasure in seeing the general insulted to her face. "I believe she's with Ruby Lead, ma'am. Ruby Lead is flying a F-16D."

The general paled. It suddenly occurred to Cordovin that Calavera might not be giving up at all. "Meroune, what is the course of Ruby Lead?"

"Ah…course is north-northeast, 81 degrees. She is at 18,000 feet and climbing, speed about 350."

That seemed normal enough, but in her mind, Cordovin summoned a map of the Mediterranean. There was a US naval base at Sigonella in Sicily. The Italians were patrolling it, but Calavera might make a flat out run for the base, at supersonic speed, and one couldn't trust the Italians to intercept her; in fact, Cordovin thought, the Italian Air Force was no more enthusiastic about the blockade than much of her own air force. They could just let her through—and the GRIMM Reaper would've once more beaten Caroline Cordovin.

She gritted her teeth. "Can you contact Ruby Lead and patch me in? I want to have a little talk."

"Yes, ma'am." Meroune didn't really feel up to it, but orders were orders. She put on a headset and waited as one of the controllers set up the link, then patched in Cordovin's telephone. "Ruby Lead, Boufarik Tower, come in please."

"Ruby Lead, roger." Cordovin recognized the slightly high-pitched voice of Ruby Rose, tinny over the radio link.

"Stand by, Ruby Lead. You're on, General."

"Ruby Lead, this is Cordovin. Is Calavera with you?"

There was static for a moment, then Ruby answered, "General, ma'am, we're on Guard—"

"Put Calavera on, you little—" Cordovin screamed, but then Maria's voice came up. "Hi, Cordo, what's up?"

"You'd better not be thinking of making a run to Sigonella, Calavera! You and those insolent children are up to something, aren't you?" There was silence, which Cordovin took as her answer. "You _are_ up to something! You thought you could undermine my authority, eh? Well, if you don't return to base this instant, I will make an example out of you. I will show you the true might of France!"

Once more there was only static, but then there was a loud crunching sound. "You hear that, Cordo?" Maria said, barely intelligible, because her mouth was full. The general's knuckles turned white around the phone; the crunching was the sound of pistachios. "That's the sound of me not giving a shit. Ruby Lead Bravo out."

Cordovin almost flung the phone down in rage. "Meroune!" she shouted. "Where is the AWACS? That old bitch is going to try to get into Europe! Tell them to move south and keep an eye on that damned F-16!"

"Um…General, ma'am, the AWACS is _already_ moving south. It's…nearing the Algerian coast; it should be feet dry in about five minutes."

" _What?"_ Cordovin exclaimed. "Who gave that order?"

"Colonel Legrand. There's been word that a GRIMM attack could develop from the Sahara, from Chad."

"Why that…" Cordovin got control of herself. Legrand had that authority, and the AWACS could track Calavera as well from its current location as it could from west of Corsica, possibly even better. "Very well, Meroune. I want an active air scramble of all our fighters. We're going to fix that old hag once and for all!"

Meroune swallowed nervously, and wondered if the general had finally gone off the deep end. There were 24 Mirage 2000s based at Boufarik, which was beyond overkill for one F-16. "General, with respect…Ruby Lead is in international airspace. We have to have a good reason to intercept them. Ruby Lead could refuse to accompany the fighters back to Boumediene, and they would be right to do so. I apologize for pointing this out, General."

"How dare you—"

The lieutenant further risked her career. "General, again, with respect—if you scramble everything and there _is_ a GRIMM attack, it would cause an international incident. And, well, ma'am…hurt your career."

"You insolent—" Cordovin once more calmed herself down. Meroune was right. Cordovin had been promoted and sent to Algiers to end her career; she'd made too many enemies in France and elsewhere. Another mistake and she would be summarily retired—if she was lucky. "Very well, Lieutenant. You are correct. Put the Mirages on alert five. And prepare the Colossus."

"Ma'am?"

"You heard me, Lieutenant. I'm going to deal with Calavera myself." Cordovin slammed down the phone and stalked out.

In the tower, Meroune switched off the loudspeaker. The controllers looked at her with worry. "Lieutenant," one of the airmen said, "do you…do you think she's all right?"

"We can't question the general," Meroune replied diplomatically. "Contact Hangar 13 and tell them to get the Colossus ready."

"It's still experimental," the airman persisted. "It's barely been tested. It or the drones."

"You heard General Cordovin. It's either this or they send us to Afghanistan or something." Meroune bit her lip. "Airman, after you've done that, get me Colonel Legrand at Boumediene. He deserves to know what's going on."

"Yes, ma'am." The airman grimaced as he picked up the phone. "Why do I have the feeling the shit is about to hit the fan?"


	16. Come Undone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The plan falls apart as Cordovin flies to intercept Ruby and Norn Flights. Yang is decoyed off, leaving Blake alone...with Adam.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As promised, another long chapter-but this will be the penultimate one of this story arc. (Penultimate is such a cool, if overused word.) Nothing but fight in this chapter, folks.
> 
> Though maybe this chapter could be titled "Why Two Engines Are Better Than One."

_Air Algerie Flight 2621_

_South of Sardinia, Western Mediterranean Sea_

_31 July 2001_

_1220 Hours Local_

"Well, _this_ should be fun," Blake said as the Air Algerie Airbus A330 came into view. It was a rather beautiful airliner, and a fairly large one with two engines, designed for transatlantic flight; it was also easy to see in its overall white livery. It was cruising along sedately at 30,000 feet, contrails streaming from its engines. She was contrailing herself, which normally fighters never did, since it instantly gave away their position.

Blake looked backwards, between the twin tails of the F-14. About two miles back was Yang's F-23, holding high; she was not contrailing, because the Black Widow's exhausts were mixed with cold air. She waggled her wings at her friend; Yang did the same. They were maintaining strict radio silence. Blake took a deep breath and went into a shallow dive, through the airliner's contrails. Now she was below and behind the A330, and gently, she climbed and accelerated, ending up beneath it. The Tomcat shook a little and she descended some: the airliner pushed a lot of air in front of it, leaving wake turbulence behind it. Blake looked upwards: the A330 was now five hundred feet above her, enough that she could see the streaks of dirt in the lower fuselage and the lettering on the engines. It wasn't exactly Blue Angels level of formation flying, but it was close enough that the signatures would now be merged on a radar plot. Given that there hadn't been any evasive action on the part of the airliner, it meant that they were probably in a radar dead zone: neither the ground radar on Mallorca or Corsica, or the French E-3, could detect them and warn of a midair collision. _Right in the rocking chair,_ Blake thought with a smile, remembering a movie she'd watched as a kitten.

Yang, for her part, dropped down some to make sure Blake was all right, bouncing around in the Airbus' wake turbulence, though she was far enough back that it wasn't enough to throw her out of control. Everything was going great, which made her worry. _I'm getting as bad as Uncle Qrow,_ she thought, but all the same, she climbed back up to about 40,000 feet, circled around, and switched on her radar for a quick two sweeps. To her surprise, it returned four contacts, at 20,000 feet, and closing in on her position at around 400 miles an hour. She turned off her radar, but not before she noticed the formation, which was distinctly military: a classic finger-four.

 _Damn. What the hell could that be?_ There had been nothing when they'd been flying to rendezvous with the airliner; she'd picked it up at about sixty miles. It could be Spanish, Italian or French fighters. Either way, it was not good. She returned to her original course, with Blake and the airliner now well ahead. Either she left Blake and looked for herself, or she found another way.

Yang pressed the radio switch on her throttle. "Lupin, Juniper Lead," she radioed, smiling wryly; somewhere, she thought, Jaune was getting a kick out of her using his old callsign. If Pyrrha heard, she would immediately know it was Yang. "I have four bogeys, bearing three-zero-zero. Can you identify?"

"Juniper Lead, Lupin," replied one of the controllers on the French E-3F AWACS, now orbiting over the northeast coast of Algiers. "Identify _yourself!"_

"Lupin, Juniper Lead is a Fox 22, flying from Langley to Cairo West, south of the blockade line. You won't have a flight plan; I'm a Huntress." Though they were supposed to file flight plans, one of the perks of being a Huntress was that one could fly pretty much where one wanted, a free hunter looking for GRIMM. She knew the AWACS would never believe she was flying a F-23, even if they knew what one was.

"Ah, roger, Juniper. No joy." The controller didn't sound surprised; the F-22's stealth was such that, at the range she was at, even the powerful E-3's radar might not pick her up. "Your contacts are…" There was a pause. "Juniper, Lupin. Your contacts are course one-zero-five, altitude 22, speed 380. Negative squawk. Unknown type."

 _Shit._ They were awfully far north for GRIMM, which rarely if ever made it to the Mediterranean, and air pirates were pretty rare after the disastrous attack on Crete. Still, unless someone was holding an airshow, they were very likely not friendly, and their course intersected Blake's and the Airbus'. And now that she had identified herself as a Huntress, she would have to do something about it, or blow her cover. Praying Blake was listening, she sent back to the AWACS. "Lupin, Juniper. Will intercept."

"Roger, Juniper. Do you need a steer?"

"Negative, Lupin." Yang checked her fuel—there was plenty, even on internal fuel—and pushed up her throttle. The only good part about this was that at a closing rate, it would take her less than ten minutes to reach the bogeys. She wished she could communicate with Blake, as _Ember Celica_ went supersonic in a shallow dive.

* * *

Blake craned around in her seat and saw Yang disappear into the distance. She commanded herself to relax. Yang really hadn't had much of a choice, and there was always the possibility that, if it was GRIMM, they were after Ruby Flight. After all, they'd used JINN that morning, and if Salem really could detect the console's emissions, she might be trying to stop them from reaching Ironwood. She debated going to help Yang, but in the end stayed put; their objective was to get into European airspace, alone if necessary. Yang would catch up.

Blake blew out her breath, torn with indecision. If the GRIMM—or whatever they were—were at about sixty miles, then she _could_ turn around, lock on quickly, and fire both of her Phoenixes. She carried two of everything—two of the big AIM-54s, two AMRAAM, two Sidewinders, and two drop tanks, plus the conformal travel pod on the centerline.

Her radio crackled. "Good afternoon, Blake. It's nice to finally have time to ourselves, don't you think?" Blake felt herself go cold. It was Adam Taurus' voice.

"A-Adam?" she stammered. She looked around frantically. There was nothing but the airliner above her. That meant he was behind and below her. Instantly, Blake slammed the stick to the right and dived away from the A330.

"Ah, good move. I really didn't want to have to risk hitting that Airbus. There might be Faunus aboard, and we can't have that. And I've waited _so_ long for you to be alone." Abruptly her Radar Warning Receiver shrilled for her attention; Adam had locked onto her. _Where the hell is he?_ she thought; he had to be down low, for both herself and Yang missing him. "Blake, why did you have to come into my life and ruin everything?"

She weaved, trying to break his lock. "I don't want anything to do with your life!" She began dropping chaff and flares, and steepened her dive, jinking. Finally she spotted the dot of the missile, then saw it chase a flare and explode. She rolled out, now about ten thousand feet above the ocean. "Let go of the past, Adam! It's over! Do it for yourself if not for me!"

"Oh, just forget it all? Is that what you did to _me?_ Just threw our memories away?" Now she saw him, as the Moonslice rose into view between the twin tails of the Tomcat. "I let you go once already, Blake. I'm never making that mistake again."

* * *

_Over the Western Mediterranean Sea_

_North of Algiers, Republic of Algeria_

_1225 Hours Local_

Ruby switched on her radar and quickly acquired the Libyan 727, about forty miles off. "Man, this isn't going to be easy," she mused. "Never flown formation with an airliner…much less _under_ one." She glanced into the mirrors set into the canopy frame. "You ever do something this crazy, Maria?"

"Can't say as I have. Flew escort for Air Force One once, when Nixon was President. We were in clouds above and below, so I flew inverted to try to get the crew to think _they_ were upside down." She laughed. "Didn't work, and I got my ass chewed. Tricky Dick thought it was pretty funny, though."

Ruby laughed as well, but then her radio crackled. "Ruby Lead, Crow 13. We're in the air, and we got problems."

Ruby throttled back a little. "Crow 13, Ruby Lead, say again?"

"Ruby Lead, Legrand scrambled us—Ruby Two, Norn Three and Four. Cordo's coming after us herself in something called a Colossus, and she's put Boufarik on alert five."

"That's just great," Ruby grumped, though she didn't key the radio. She had no idea what a Colossus was, but if she scrambled Boufarik's wing of Mirage 2000s, that was bad on so many levels. Shooting down GRIMM and air pirates was one thing, but opening fire on friendlies would mean an international incident, and that was the least of it. "We're going to have to call it off, Maria," Ruby said. "No way we fight French fighters. We're on the same side."

"We're in international airspace!" Maria protested. "They fire on us, we've got the right to defend ourselves! We haven't entered French airspace yet." She banged a fist on the side of the canopy. "Dammit! This is my fault. I shouldn't have given her hell like that. What was I thinking?"

"Let's not give up yet." Ruby turned the F-16. "Norn Three, Ruby Lead, alpha check."

"Ruby Lead, Norn Three," Ren radioed back. "Our course is zero-eight-zero, angels 18, speed 200." Ruby translated that as north-northwest, 18,000 feet, at 200 miles an hour—much slower than usual, but they had to stay close together with Nora.

"Norn Three, I think we might be blown. Maintain formation; I'm coming to you." Ruby dipped the nose a little to see over it. She caught movement below and to her right. "Tally-ho on you, one o'clock low." She checked her radar, then turned it off. "Range seventeen miles. Float and go tactical." The formation spread out; there was no reason to fool anyone anymore, and a close formation like they were in was asking for trouble. It also switched them from formal callsigns to their tactical ones.

"Ruby, Qrow, bandit, bearing one-seven-two, course zero-eight-two, altitude eight thousand and climbing, speed 1400." Ruby's eyes widened: 1200 miles an hour was not only supersonic, it was over Mach 2. The Mirage 2000 could make that speed, but Cordovin was definitely showing some courage to show up in a single aircraft against four.

That reminded her. "Pyrrha, Oscar, Blake, Yang: this is Ruby. We're blown. Rejoin on me, cords—" She read off the GPS coordinates.

"Pyrrha, roger. Returning. Sixty miles."

"Oscar, roger that. On my way. Forty miles."

Ruby waited, and repeated her message. There was no response from Yang or Blake.

* * *

_Near Cagliari, Sardinia, Italy_

_1230 Hours Local_

Yang's steel fingers trembled on the stick. _Adam, here?! Where the fuck did he come from? How the hell did he know—shit. I got to get back there!_ Then the F-23 came out of a cloud and she saw the four aircraft below her. She rolled, dipped her left wing, and saw two things at once: one, they were MiG-17s, and two, they were wearing White Fang sigils. _Adam's little helpers._ _Dammit…they're decoys, to get us to split up! Never should've left Blake._

Still, she couldn't leave them, either. Blake and Adam were evenly matched, but introducing four MiGs into the situation would at best be a distraction neither Blake nor Yang could afford. She needed to kill these four before she rejoined Blake, or at least drive them off. She toggled the radio, once more hoping Blake was listening. "Lupin, Ya—Juniper Lead!" She quickly corrected herself. "Tally-ho! Bogeys are Frescos, wearing White Fang markings! Am engaging!" She used the NATO reporting name for the MiG-17.

"Juniper, Lupin, say again? Bogeys are White Fang?"

Yang wasn't listening. The MiGs hadn't seen her; they were still maintaining formation, and still had their drop tanks on. She rolled over and dived, coming in behind them, switching to Sidewinders. The tanks suddenly spiraled off and the formation broke up; one of them had seen her. She selected the lead aircraft, peeling off to the left, and closed the distance.

The MiG pilot had some experience. He threw the little fighter into a hard break; Yang climbed, rolled and dived again, knowing that the nimble MiG-17 could turn with even her F-23, despite being nearly forty years older. Another break, this time to the left. Yang checked her tail: the other MiGs were trying to get in behind her. The IR sensor growled in her ear, and Yang pulled the trigger. The Sidewinder popped out from one of her launch bays and blew the MiG apart.

Yang pulled the stick back into her lap and climbed as a second MiG tried to close into gun distance; none of them were carrying missiles. She rolled out over the top, picked the last MiG, which was flying straight and level. Yang almost felt sorry for the pilot: it was very obviously a new guy, in their first battle, confused as to what they were supposed to be doing. It was also their last, as Yang fired another Sidewinder; the MiG's left wing tore free with the missile impact and it spiraled into the water. She slid to the right, spotted one of the two remaining MiGs, climbing away and headed northwest, its afterburner glowing. She let that one go for now; the other MiG was closer, trying to dive away from her. Yang closed the distance and set up for a guns pass; she was out of Sidewinders, and too close for her four AMRAAMs. The MiG pilot went into a split-S. "You're too low!" Yang shouted involuntarily. She remembered Bobbie Jo, the Branwen bandit pilot who had also done a split-S too low over Death Valley and somehow pulled it out. This pilot was not as skilled: the MiG dived vertically into the ocean in a huge spray of water. Yang, shaking her head, pushed the throttle forward, locked onto the last MiG, and dispatched it with an AMRAAM. "Lupin, Juniper Lead," she radioed. "Splash four."

"Juniper, Lupin—Bravo Zulu!" The controller was ecstatic, giving her a well done.

Yang didn't feel all that accomplished; it had been less a dogfight than a massacre, over in less than three minutes. The MiG pilots had been very inexperienced, and hadn't stood a chance. "Lupin, Juniper. There may be a fifth bandit; can you identify?"

"Negative, Juniper, but Cagliari just reported they have two unidentified contacts that just went feet dry."

"Lupin, Juniper, on my way!" Yang firewalled the throttle; she'd risk running out of fuel. Blake needed help.

* * *

Blake knew the Moonslice all too well, even if she hadn't faced it over Beacon; Adam had trained her in air combat tactics using it. In a close-range dogfight, even her mighty Tomcat was no match for it. So she had to fight on her own terms, not Adam's.

That was proving harder than she thought. She'd broke left, opening the distance, using her more powerful engines to pull away: she had the fuel to spare, and Adam didn't, not for a lag chase. To her surprise, he stayed with her, and Blake had to balance her speed: too far ahead, and he would kill her with an AMRAAM; too close, and she'd be in the situation she was trying to avoid.

"Can you do anything but run?" Adam taunted.

Blake gritted her teeth. She knew he was trying to bait her into making a mistake. _Run this, you prick,_ she thought, and bled off a little speed. The Tomcat's wings automatically cycled forward, usually a good indication of how much energy she had in a fight. She moved the nose up just a little, baiting her own trap. Adam took the bait, closing in for a guns kill, but prepared for the "snatch and grab," Blake throwing the F-14 upwards to stop her forward momentum and force the overshoot.

Blake didn't do that. She gave it a half-second, then accelerated again, throwing _Gambol Shroud_ up into a barrel roll; at the apex of the roll, she opened the speedbrake on the rear of the F-14's fuselage. Adam had started to follow her into the roll, but now overshot. She retracted the speedbrake, rolled her wings level, and fired a Sidewinder, then a second for good measure. "Dodge this, you son of a bitch!"

And then Adam did. Blake watched as the Moonslice dumped flares, then skidded to the right, the forward-swept wing design keeping the aircraft from stalling and allowing Adam to do what Blake could never do. The two Sidewinders missed, she was now the one to overshoot, and he was behind her again.

Blake broke hard right and dived; sky and ocean swapped places, but now it wasn't just ocean, but land as well. Blake realized they were over Sardinia, Italian territory; it now gave her another opportunity. "Okay, Adam," she growled, "let's see if your balls are bigger than I remember." She opened the throttle and headed for the forest-covered mountain ridges.

* * *

_North of Algiers, Republic of Algeria_

_1230 Hours Local_

"I don't believe it," Ruby gushed. "Cordo's seriously going to fight us in _that?"_

"What? What is it?" Maria couldn't see what Ruby was staring at, especially since Cordovin was still a good fifteen miles away—though she was closing the distance rapidly.

"It's a Mirage IV!"

"A _what?"_ Maria shook her head in disbelief. "Either she's dumber than I thought she was, if that's possible, or she knows something we don't."

Ruby wasn't sure herself. The Mirage IV was an upscaled version of the Mirage III, though a good deal larger and with two engines instead of one. It was designed to give the French a strategic bomber, capable of delivering a small nuclear weapon to targets in western Russia with a fair chance of outrunning the shockwave of a detonation. The Third World War had ended that, but the Mirage IV had entered service as a high-speed strike aircraft, usually used to attack ground-based GRIMM like Goliaths, and then speed off before Beowolves or Ursai could intercept. The French had withdrawn them from service, but apparently not all of them. Whatever the case, the Mirage IV was not a dogfighter by even the standards of the early 1960s.

Despite her earlier regrets, Maria opened a channel all the same. "Cordo, Maria! You're joking, right? You're going to fight in that thing? You're just a tiny old lady in a very big airplane!" Ruby grimaced at that; it would either anger Cordovin to the point of insensibility, or it would make her more determined to kill them.

"You little roaches!" Cordovin shot back. "You thought you could creep your way into France! Well, let's see how your resolve holds out against the might of the Armee de l'Air!" As Ruby watched, the Mirage turned in behind the three-ship formation of Weiss, Nora and Ren. "So be it! _Vive le France!"_ Something detached from under the wide delta wings of the Mirage, ignited, and headed for the three of them. Ruby couldn't believe what she saw.

"Weiss, Norns! Break left—Cordo just fired a _Lancer_ at you!" Ruby didn't know how else to describe it: it was bigger than a missile, but had the same circular wings of the smallest of GRIMM.

Weiss slammed the throttles forward, climbed, looped, and dived on the drone. "DUST, IRIS-T, target drone!" she called out, and the DUST system on _Myrtenaster_ instantly locked onto the target. "Weiss, Fox Two!" She pulled the trigger, unleashing the nimble IRIS missile. The drone exploded just as it was switching targets from Nora to Weiss.

"Rubies, Norns, weapons free!" Ruby ordered. As far as she was concerned, Cordovin had opened the ball, so now the French general was fair game: they were in international airspace, and her pilots had the right to defend themselves.

"DUST, target Mirage IV." The Typhoon's radar swung in that direction under the nose, gauged the distance, and locked an IRIS onto it. Cordovin, however, surprised her: she had slowed to fire the drone, but now the Mirage's afterburners lit, and she shot past Weiss, condensation hiding the Mirage for a brief moment as she almost touched supersonic speeds, still angling for a shot on Ren and Nora. Weiss was fairly certain that the Mirage IV didn't have guns, but clearly this was not a normal Mirage IV.

Ruby saw Ren and Nora go into a defensive split: Ren climbed, while Nora slowed down, actually turning the A-10's lack of speed to an advantage, daring the delta-winged bomber to fight above the oceantops where the Warthog lived. Cordovin wasn't that stupid: she followed Ren. "Hold on, Maria!" Ruby yelled and racked the F-16 into a six-G turn. Her thumb switched to guns: missiles would be more effective, but she hoped to damage Cordovin; there was no telling what the fallout would be if she killed a French brigadier general, even one who had fired on her first. The Mirage was slightly higher now, and Ruby noticed that there were four hardpoints under the wing, plus something conformal beneath the wide fuselage: one hardpoint was empty, but the other three were carrying something as well. Ruby centered the gunsight pipper on the tail—it would be a somewhat difficult deflection shot-and fired. She saw the sparks of strikes on the rear fuselage, and then was past. "Maria, did we get her?" She turned right to come back around for another pass.

"Nope!" Maria called out. Even with her bad eyesight, she could not see any smoke or fire from the Mirage.

"Ha!" Cordovin crowed. "The Colossus is far more armored than a normal craft! You are ants! You are lower than ants!"

"Ah, shut up," Ruby snapped, and set up for a second gun pass. Not everything on an aircraft was armored, not even on an A-10.

Without warning, the Mirage suddenly turned into her. It was no hard-G turn, but it was surprising; abruptly, Ruby wondered if the conformal shape was a gunpod. Her question was answered a second later: one of the wing stations disappeared behind a cloud of smoke, and suddenly there were four pinpoints of flame headed towards her, even as the RWR warned these missiles were radar-guided.

"Oh shit!" Ruby broke off and dodged away, but the missiles corkscrewed after her.

* * *

_West of Cagiliari, Sardinia, Italy_

_1233 Hours Local_

Blake had to admit something to herself: if it wasn't for the fact that her crazy ex-boyfriend was trying to kill her, she would be having a great deal of fun. _Gambol Shroud_ was clearing the tops of the forest by less than fifty feet, as she weaved through the ridges and mountains of western Sardinia, dodging trees, villages and rock walls at speeds that were near suicidal. She wasn't looking for an opportunity to force Adam out in front of her, or to somehow regain the advantage: she was trying to scrape him off against a ridge or the side of a mountain, pitting her ability to fly against his, and seeing if he was as courageous as he had always boasted.

The problem was, she reflected as she did a knife-edge pass to barely miss a spire of a church, he _was_ that courageous. He stuck with her through the twists and turns, even occasionally got lower than she did. He didn't open fire with missiles or guns, either because he was too busy concentrating on flying, or because he was trying to fly _her_ into the ground. Neither pilot's hands were still for even half a second, sticks and throttles constantly moving, reflexes and eyes considering their next move in four dimensions, the normal three plus time. Both were breathing hard into their masks, each a second away from a fiery, sudden death.

Blake made a hard right turn, wings threading between a ridgeline of trees, then turned again as she entered a shallow canyon. She never looked at her instrument panel, just at the terrain, and occasionally into the mirrors to see where the Moonslice was—inevitably, dodging in and out between her tails. She climbed for a quick second, missing a monastery, then dived back down into the valley as Adam dodged around the mountaintop.

It couldn't continue forever: someone would make a mistake—and it was Blake. Not in flying, but in not knowing the ground. Ahead of her, the valley abruptly ended in a high mountain. There were no side valleys to fly into: she could only climb. The problem was, that would leave her a perfect target. Blake was more angry than afraid. "Dammit," she whispered. Adam was going to beat her again.

She pulled back the stick and pushed the throttle forward. _Gambol Shroud_ 's wings raked back as she clawed for open sky.

As it turned out, Adam was just as surprised as she was: he didn't know the ground any better than she did. He saw the wall coming up and knew Blake would have to climb, but her sudden steep ascent caught him offguard, even as he pulled his own stick back into his stomach. With two glowing afterburners, he had the perfect Sidewinder shot as they climbed into the blue sky, but he was too close for missiles. Instead, he pulled the trigger.

Moonslice's twin nose-mounted twenty millimeter cannons thumped rhythmically and caught the Tomcat at the apex of its climb, as she passed through 14,000 feet. One shell punched straight through the outer panel of the left wing; three more tore into the left engine, which exploded. The reinforced titanium engine bay contained the explosion, but the impact and sudden loss of power caused Blake to lose control of the F-14. The nose, already pitched up, fell backwards and to the left, the Tomcat staggered drunkenly, and went into a flat spin.

Adam watched as _Gambol Shroud_ spun out over the sea. He wondered if Blake would get control back; she was a good pilot, but flat spins were notoriously hard to recover from. He pressed the radio button. "People hurt me long before we met, Blake," he said, sadness in his voice. "But no one hurt me quite like you. You didn't leave scars like the others…you just left me alone. So before you die, Blake, tell me—how does it feel to be alone?"

It was at that moment that Adam noticed the sunlight had been blotted out. He looked up and actually screamed as Yang dived out of the sun.

* * *

_North of Algiers, Republic of Algeria_

_1235 Hours Local_

Maria held on for dear life, her hands braced against both sides of the canopy as Ruby threw _Crescent Rose_ in seemingly every direction at once, with flares and chaff flying crazily across the sky. The missiles kept up their pursuit, but one lost lock and chased a chaff ghost; two crashed into each other and exploded, and the fourth, thrown outwards by Ruby's insane maneuvering, simply ran out of fuel and detonated well short of its target. Through the helmet earphones, Maria could hear Ruby nearly hyperventilating with exertion. A quick glance behind showed that Cordovin had stayed behind them, to see if her missiles finished off the F-16—and now that they hadn't, she was closing in to finish the job. Maria couldn't see if it was true, but she had a very bad feeling this Mirage IV had guns.

Cordovin, for her part, was impressed by the little upstart's flying ability: Wasp minimissiles were designed to be nearly impossible to dodge by sheer volume, and yet the red-trimmed F-16 had escaped. She settled the gunsight over what she knew was the back of Maria Calavera's head: the Colossus shared the same wingroot DEFA 552 30mm cannon as the Mirage III.

Then her RWR warbled for her attention. The Mirage IV had poor rearward vision, so a rearward facing camera had been installed in the Colossus. Cordovin looked down and saw the Typhoon angling for a gun attack. "Fool," she said, though at least this time she didn't use the radio. She gave the Schnee girl a moment, then broke right and down, ruining her sight picture. Cordovin leveled out a few hundred feet over the ocean, then turned left to reacquire the F-16. She didn't see it, but she did see the J-10: Ren had come down to help Weiss, misjudged the speed of the Mirage, and ended up slightly ahead and to Cordovin's left. She slid over and prepared to fire her second Wasp launcher.

She suddenly remembered there was an A-10 down here somewhere. Nora reminded her by opening fire. "You stay away from my man!" she shouted, even if no one could hear her.

" _Merde!"_ Cordovin shouted, and slammed the throttles forward, getting both lower in altitude and lower in her seat. She barely escaped the hail of thirty millimeter shells: the Colossus's engines and cockpit were armored to fend off twenty millimeter shells, but not the monstrous ones of the GAU-8. "You little bitch!" Cordovin screamed. "Have someone to play with! DUST, target Drone 2 at A-10, launch!"

The drone shot off the rail, activated its own radar, and quickly acquired _Magnhild,_ as it had already been fed targeting information by the Colossus' DUST system. It turned and acclerated towards the A-10: the drone more a missile than anything else, designed to close on its foe rapidly and destroy it, its AI programmed to pursue its prey until its fuel ran out or it hit the target. Nora saw the drone coming and turned away, cramming on the power, but the Warthog was simply too slow to escape. She closed her eyes: if she was going to die, she didn't want to see it coming.

The A-10 shuddered, but not with a hit: the drone exploded as it ran into a cone of gunfire from Ren. He had slowed down to allow Cordovin to get ahead, saw the drone launch, and turned hard into it. "Splash drone," he struggled out against the G-forces.

"Thanks, Ren!" Nora said, equally breathlessly. As she got some altitude, she resolved never to underestimate old ladies again.

* * *

The Mirage IV rose into the sky as Cordovin sought altitude as well, looking for the F-16, though any target would do. She rolled to the left and spotted her quarry below, but then the Mirage suddenly shuddered with hits from nose to tail. She managed to twist out of the gunfire again, and the armor had held, but only just. "What the—" Then, out the right side, she saw a black arrowhead going away. "The F-117!" It was no wonder her RWR had never warned her. She turned after the Nighthawk. "DUST, target F-117, fire Wasp!" The minimissiles would make short work of something as comparatively unmaneuverable as the F-117, assuming they would lock on.

"DUST inoperative due to damage," the onboard computer duly reported. Cordovin mumbled something unprintable and reverted to manual control, but by then Qrow had reversed his turn and was coming back in for another gun run; Cordovin broke away, spotted Weiss, and went after her.

* * *

Ruby saw the Mirage turn to the left. "Weiss, Ruby, Cordo's on you!" She wished she could push the sweatsoaked hair out of her eyes. "God, Maria! You never said Cordovin was this good!"

"You never asked!" Maria returned.

"Well, she's doing a damn good impression of Werner Voss up here!" Ruby remembered the name of the long-dead German ace from the report Weiss had helped her write: like Voss, Cordovin was surrounded by enemies, all of whom were aces in their own right, but she was brilliantly shifting targets and keeping the supposedly unwieldy Mirage IV in the fight, engaging every time she had an opportunity. "Weiss, she's shooting!" Ruby warned.

Weiss had been caught by surprise by Cordovin's manuevering as well. She'd slowed down, trying to find an opportunity for a missile shot; even the heavier Mauser cannon her Typhoon carried didn't seem to be able to do much, so she was going to have to use a missile. She saw the Mirage turn into her and another deluge of missiles come spiraling out. Weiss rolled and headed for the ocean, the Wasps hot on her heels, but unlike Ruby, she knew now what they were facing. She ignored the RWR screaming at her that she was seconds from being hit, waited until the Mediterranean was uncomfortably close, then suddenly hauled back on the stick and engaged the afterburners. She'd almost timed it too closely: the twin engines howled and left wakes on the ocean surface, but the Wasps could not make the turn: all four crashed harmlessly into the sea and exploded.

Cordovin grumbled and broke left, sensing rather than seeing that someone was coming up behind her—which turned out to be Ruby. As she turned left, she saw the F-117 coming in from head on; Qrow was not being as sporting as his niece and intended to blast Cordovin through the canopy. She pulled the trigger even as she cheated the turn tighter. Below the fuselage, what Ruby had thought was a conformal gunpod was actually yet another drone launcher: bay doors opened and the drone dropped into the slipstream, its onboard radar coming on to acquire a target as it accelerated away from the Mirage. "Die, Nighthawk!" she yelled.

The drone sailed right past the F-117, unable to detect it, but then it detected no less than four separate targets: Ren's J-10, Nora's A-10, Weiss' Typhoon, and Ruby's F-16. Faced with a smorgasbord of aerial targets, the drone's AI could not decide which it wanted to engage, which quickly overwhelmed its computer brain. The drone flew placidly on, consumed by the electronic version of utter confusion as it took itself completely out of the battle.

Cordovin didn't have time to worry about a drone that didn't quite have all the kinks worked out. She engaged her own afterburners, going supersonic, putting distance between herself and her pursuers. With all three drones and her Wasps gone, she was down to her guns, but the Colossus was no dogfighter, despite what she'd done with it; she reasoned that it was time for a strategic retreat, and so headed for a group of clouds. She would get back over land, then surge the Boufarik Mirages, and that would be the end for these little upstarts in general and Maria Calavera in particular.

Then she saw a F-18 crossing right in front of her. "Well, well," she smiled, and opened fire.

* * *

_Northwest of Cagiliari, Sardinia, Italy_

_1236 Hours Local_

Adam pushed the Moonslice into a turn so tight that the airframe audibly groaned and darkness appeared at the edges of his vision, threatening his consciousness. In a split-second, he had remembered that Ruby Rose had rammed Cinder Fall at Beacon, and it seemed like Ruby's sister was bent on upholding the family tradition.

Yang was actually not trying to ram Adam, but knew her sudden dive would panic him into thinking so. She saw the F-14 still in its flat spin, but though she felt horrible in doing it, she had to leave Blake to her fate, otherwise Adam would recover—and she had to keep him off-balance. She turned into him, even as he turned back into her. _Dammit,_ she thought, _forgot how good this fucker is._ A second later, they found each other in a vertical scissors, twisting and turning into each other, trying to force the other out front, cheating the turn tighter. The two aircraft were fairly well matched in this kind of fight, and both wondered who would make the first wrong move.

The answer was neither: even the Moonslice's better stall speed was evenly matched against Yang's better thrust-to-weight ratio; she could accelerate in a climb, and Adam couldn't. It wasn't a mistake either made, but Adam being slightly faster and more experienced than Yang. He pulled the throttle back and dropped his flaps, finally getting her marginally out front, though barely; as Adam swung his nose around, he just avoided colliding with the F-23. Her tail filled his windscreen, so he let the Moonslice wallow in its stall for a moment, letting Yang get a little further ahead, and opened fire.

Nothing happened. Adam realized with unfamiliar fear that his guns had jammed in the hard turns of the scissors.

The Moonslice fell backwards. Because of its design, it slashed downwards rather than went into a spin, and Adam was easily able to recover. As he got his airspeed back up, Yang was in a dive, picking up speed to turn back into him. That was fine with Adam: he switched to his AMRAAMs.

* * *

Blake fought down the urge to vomit her breakfast all over her instrument panel as the world spun sickeningly around her. The spin was so intense that her helmet banged off both sides of the canopy. She focused on the altimeter as it spun crazily, shutting out the outside world. She couldn't look outside and get disoriented. Her instructors at Pensacola and Cherry Point would have advised bailing out at this point, but Blake was not going to let Adam win.

She had to get the nose down. Blake pulled the throttles back to idle to stop the asymmetric thrust issue. She pushed the stick as far forward as it would go, then pushed down on the left rudder pedal—the opposite of the spin. The nose dropped, the F-14 yawed to the left, and she came out of the spin, though the Tomcat shuddered on the edge of going right back into it. Blake ran up the throttle on her good engine and pulled out with only a thousand feet to spare.

Blake's hands were trembling as she flew upwards, resisting _Gambol Shroud's_ urge to pull towards the dead engine. She looked up and gasped in surprise.

* * *

Yang turned back to face Adam head on. Both locked on to each other. "Moment of truth, Yang!" Adam radioed. "Do you think you're faster than you were at Beacon?" Yang's fingers were shaking on the stick. When both fired, both would have to dodge missiles that were rather hard to dodge. Adam was good enough, she knew, but was she?

She hesitated. "Me neither," Adam laughed, and his finger tightened on the trigger.

Moonslice suddenly jerked so hard to the left that the stick was torn out of Adam's grasp, and he felt like the aircraft had been kicked in the tail. "What in the hell—" Warning lights lit up his instrument panel: oil pressure was dropping, engine power wasn't far behind. _What hit me? Yang hasn't fired—_

He looked into the mirrors in his canopy. All three were filled with the black nose of _Gambol Shroud._ "Impossible," he breathed. Instinctively, he broke right and rammed the throttle forward to get away, but the engine had been damaged, and the acceleration was poor. Blake's wasn't much better, and his sudden maneuver was enough to pull away from her.

But not Yang.

Yang remembered her father telling her that fighter pilots tended to break towards their dominant hand, and guessed Adam was right-handed. She saw Blake come up behind the Moonslice and rake it with cannon fire, and with the two sides closing the distance within missile range, she shifted to her left and pulled the trigger. Her own cannon ripped through the belly and wings of Adam's fighter, igniting fuel and tearing what remained of the engine to shreds. The Moonslice went into a shallow dive, sentenced to death by simple gravity.

"Adam, get out of it! It's over!" she yelled. On some level, she still loved Adam Taurus, and didn't want him to die this way. "Punch out!"

Adam looked out of the canopy as Yang turned to almost fly formation with him. "What does she even see in you?" he said instead.

"Big tits." Yang couldn't think of anything pithy to say. She wondered if she could shoot Adam in his parachute if he bailed out. Adam laughed and threw her a salute.

"Adam, for God's sake!" Blake pleaded.

"Sorry, Blake. This is where my story ends. Yang," he addressed her, "she made a promise to stay by my side once. You see where that got me." He watched as the sea rushed up to meet him, and raised his visor. He didn't wear the mask in combat. "See you on the other side, Blake."

The Moonslice hit the water and disintegrated, sending pieces spiralling across the waves. The remains bobbed once and sank.

* * *

_North of Algiers, Republic of Algeria_

_1241 Hours Local_

Oscar had raced ahead of Pyrrha, pushing the Hornet to its limit as he tried to reach the dogfight in time. He had come out of a bank of clouds, turned, and found himself directly in front of a Mirage. He went into a break, but not before cannon shells ripped through his left tailplane and engine. Unlike Blake, he didn't go into a flat spin—F-18s were notoriously hard to spin—but he did find himself fighting the controls as the onboard computer tried to compensate for the sudden loss of power. As he tried to keep the aircraft from falling into the sea, Cordovin slid in behind him, determined to at least make _someone_ pay this day.

"Cordovin! Hold your fire! Don't shoot!" Ruby's voice was frantic.

"Very well," Cordovin replied, keeping the gunsight centered between the Hornet's twin engines. "Surrender for your crimes. Put your landing gear down, Ruby Rose, and follow me back to Boufarik. Or I blast whoever this is out of the sky." She was not above blackmail if that was what it took to win.

"Listen to me, General," Ruby said. "Better people than you have tried to stop us and failed, but they're different than you. We're supposed to be on the same side. We're supposed to work together to stop the GRIMM, but you're sitting here trying to kill us, even though we fly for the same _freaking side!_ "

"Says the people trying to break the blockade and disobey orders!"

"We didn't want to!" Ruby insisted. "We did it because you gave us no other choice!" Cordovin looked over and met Ruby's eyes, and saw Maria gazing at her from the backseat. "Please, General. Stand down. We'll land, but you _have_ to hear us out. For real, this time!"

"Cordo, for fuck's sake!" Maria added. "You can beat the hell out of me on the ground if you want, but this is just plain stupidity! You're going to get a bunch of good people killed—including yourself! If you love France, if you love _anything,_ you'll listen to Ruby!"

Cordovin shook her head. "I've heard enough. I may die today, but it will be denying you one last time, Calavera!" She once more centered the gunsight. Without DUST, it had a tendency to drift.

"All right, I tried." The F-16 edged out to the side a little more. "She's all yours, Pyrrha."

" _What?"_ Cordovin checked the rearward facing camera. The F-22 slid into view and opened fire. The engines on the Colossus were armored everywhere but the exhaust pipe itself, and that was where Pyrrha placed her cannon shells. One engine shuddered and died. Pyrrha climbed the Raptor slightly. "Cordovin from Pyrrha. The next ones go through your canopy. Do _not_ make me do this."

Cordovin bared her teeth in rage; now it was her that was fighting a dead engine, though the Mirage IV was designed to fly on one if it was necessary. If it had been Ruby Rose making the threat, she would've dared the girl to take her best shot. Pyrrha Nikos the Invincible Girl, however, didn't make idle threats. "No," Cordovin snarled, even as she flew to one side, taking Oscar out of her sights. "No, no, _no!"_ She banged her fist on the instrument panel. She switched over to Guard frequency, where she knew everyone in Ruby and Norn Flights, and Boufarik and the AWACS, could hear her. "Listen to me, you miscreants, you traitors! You'll never make it to France! Do you hear me? _Never!_ I may not get you, but the rest of the Armee de l'Air will!" She let the radio button go in rage, waiting for either Ruby to plead with her again, or Pyrrha to kill her.

Neither happened. Instead, a new voice entered the conversation. "General Cordovin, is that you? This is Lupin!"

Cordovin smiled triumphantly; it was the AWACS. _Perfect,_ she thought, _this will make things easier._ "Lupin, Cordovin. Scramble everything out of Boufarik. Authentication Delta Alpha, time is—"

To her surprise, the controller overrode her. "Cordovin, we've already done that! We vectored them south!"

"What in the hell for?" Cordovin was so shocked she didn't bother with proper radio etiquette.

"GRIMM, General! Raid count is thirty Beowolves and two Nevermore, bearing three-zero-zero, speed 200, altitude 12,000 and descending, range 40 miles—course Algiers!"

Cordovin was quiet for the first time that day. "Oh my God," she moaned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Werner Voss showed up in Weiss' memories waaaay back in the first few chapters of "On RWBY Wings." For those of you unfamiliar with Voss, he was a German ace, flying a Fokker Dr.I triplane. He was bounced by B Flight of the Royal Flying Corps' 56 Squadron, flying SE.5s, every one of which were ace pilots. Voss fought them alone for almost 15 minutes until finally he was shot down. Voss was only 20 years old at the time. He could have tried to escape, but instead remained and fought--and died. Port used the lesson to school Weiss on being overconfident; looks like Cordovin didn't go to Vytal Flag.
> 
> The Mirage IV exists; it served from 1964 to around 2003 before it was retired in favor of the Mirage 2000N. It was never turned into anything like this, of course. The Wasp minimissiles also existed-they were a projected weapons system in the mid-1980s. So far as I know, they never went beyond the testing stage, if that.


	17. Blaze of Glory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As the Nevermores approach Algiers, Ruby hatches a desperate plan. Time to put her silver eyes to good use...assuming she doesn't die, of course.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After the huge chapter last time, a smaller one this time around. More air combat as Ruby and Norn Flights take on the Nevermores, though it's not a particularly long fight: neither was Ruby vs. the Leviathan in canon RWBY, either. I stole a bit from Star Wars, but I don't feel bad about that...after all, Lucas "borrowed" from a lot of sources himself.
> 
> Normally, this is where the "season" would end, as the fight with the Leviathan ended Season 6 of canon RWBY. I thought about ending this story arc here, but I'm going to get our bunch to Ironwood first before I go on to "On RWBY Wings V," which will combine about half of Season 7 and all of Season 8 of canon RWBY. There's some things Blake needs to work through after Adam's death, and Yang will be right there for her. Will this blossom into Bumblebee, or something else? Well, we'll find out.

_Near Algiers, Republic of Algeria_

_31 July 2001_

_1245 Hours Local_

"This is your fault, Ruby Rose!" Brigadier General Caroline Cordovin shouted. "Your fault! Do you hear me?"

"Oh, shut up." Ruby was being insubordinate, she knew, but Cordovin was being an idiot. "Ruby and Norn Flights, break off and orbit, go to channel base plus three." That would get them to their own discreet frequency, which had the added effect of ignoring Cordovin. The base was zero, the default that the nine of them had used since Beacon if they didn't agree to a base number. Ruby reached forward and switched to channel three. "Norn Flight, check in and give state." It suddenly occurred to Ruby that she hadn't heard from Yang or Blake since they'd taken off; she wondered if they had already made it to Aviano.

"Pyrrha, four active, two heat, three hours fuel." Other than shooting out one of Cordovin's engines on the general's Mirage IV, Pyrrha had barely been engaged.

"Oscar, four active, two heat, two hours fuel, but I have engine and stabiliator damage." Ruby could see Oscar struggling to keep his stricken F-18 in the air.

"Ren, four active, two heat, two hours fuel."

"Nora, four heat, one hour fuel!"

"Qrow, four heat, two hours fuel."

"Ruby Flight, check in," Ruby radioed next.

"Weiss, two active, two heat, two hours fuel."

Ruby waited for Blake or Yang, and was about to switch back to either their former frequency or the emergency Guard channel, when suddenly Yang's voice came through her earphones, a little breathless. "Yang here! Three actives, one hour fuel! We just engaged White Fang near Sardinia. Splash five, including Moonslice." Ruby's eyebrows rose: the Moonslice was Adam Taurus' personal aircraft. There was a story there, but it was going to have to wait.

"Ruby, Blake." The Faunus' voice sounded subdued. "Four active, two hours fuel, but I've also got engine damage. We're headed to you; course one-seven-five, speed 250. Confirm splash on Moonslice; no ejection."

 _God, they shot down Adam._ Now Ruby _really_ wanted to hear the story, but the GRIMM were more important at the moment. "Okay, gang, here's what we're going to do. Oscar, Blake, divert to Boumediene. Everyone else, we have to help the French, otherwise those Nevermores are going to flatten Algiers. Besides, some of us don't have the fuel to make Aviano now." Ruby let the radio button go for a moment, in case anyone wanted to add something.

"Ruby, Ren. Advise there is a good chance we get arrested when we land in Algiers."

"Roger, understood," was all Ruby replied. "Permission granted to try to make Sardinia, Mallorca or France." No one answered; Ruby hadn't expected them to. "Okay then. Let's get back to channel two and do this!" She switched back to the channel used by the French. During the whole conversation, Ruby had kept an eye on Cordovin, but the Mirage IV had kept going south and descending; she was probably going to land at Boufarik. They would have to worry about her later, too.

Ruby took a breath. "Lupin, Ruby Lead," she radioed the E-3F AWACS orbiting about sixty miles to the east. "Vector us to GRIMM. We can help."

"Like hell!" Cordovin's voice blasted across the frequency. "Ruby, you will land at Boufarik and present yourself for—"

"Cordovin, Lupin. Clear the channel." The voice was authoritative, probably the senior controller aboard the AWACS. While Cordovin outranked him as well, in the air, the controllers ran the show. She went silent, and Lupin continued. "Ruby Lead, what do you have?"

"Ruby Flight is one Fox 16, one Typhoon, one Fox 23, and one Fox 14. The latter has engine damage and will divert to Boumediene. Norn Flight is one Fox 22, one Juliet 10, one Alpha 10, and one Fox 18. The Fox 18 also needs to divert due to damage. We got fuel and actives."

There was a pause. "Roger that, Ruby. We can use the help. Also there is another Fox 22 out here somewhere, Juniper Lead."

Yang's voice came up, sounding embarrassed. "Uh, Lupin, Ruby Four. Juniper is me. I sort of did that to fool you. I didn't think you would believe a Fox 23….among other things."

Another pause. "Whatever, Ruby. Steer three-zero-zero. Boufarik has engaged Beowolves. One Nevermore is at 35 miles; the other is in trail at 50 miles."

"Roger that, Lupin! We'll take the closer Nevermore first! On our way!" Ruby moved up the throttle. "Let's engage, Rubies and Norns!" She looked at Maria through the mirrors. "Blaze of glory, huh?"

"I suppose I need to be the asshole here and say it," Maria answered. "Getting JINN to Ironwood is still our top priority, and right now we have the perfect opportunity to head to Aviano. Everyone's going to be distracted. And Ren's right; Cordo will arrest us the moment we land."

"Thanks," Ruby told her. "But it's like you said—we're supposed to protect others, all the way to the bitter end."

"When did I say that?" Maria asked. "I must have been drunk."

"I can land real quick at Algiers," Ruby said. "Drop you and JINN off."

"Nah. I came along for the ride."

* * *

Yang was torn. She needed to catch up with the rest of Ruby Flight forty miles to the south, which the F-23 could do very quickly using supercruise—but that meant leaving Blake alone, and the rule was never to leave one's wingperson. She'd already done that once today, and Blake was lucky to be alive.

Blake already knew what she was thinking. "Yang, this is Blake. Go."

"But…what if there's any more White Fang?"

"There isn't. Go. I'm okay."

Yang looked across the distance between her and the F-14. She put her artificial hand on the canopy. "Roger that," she said reluctantly, then pushed the throttle to the stops.

 _I'm okay,_ Blake repeated to herself. She was not okay. The image of Moonslice hitting the water replayed itself over and over in her head. She couldn't believe Adam Taurus—her enemy, her stalker, her friend, her lover—was gone. It seemed too quick an ending, too easy. Blake closed her eyes, and pushed those thoughts to the side. She still had a job to do.

 _Gambol Shroud_ was flying well enough, considering it had a dead engine and a six-inch hole in the left wing. Blake climbed to 40,000 feet and began scanning with her radar. The Nevermore was stealthy, but her radar was strong enough to pick it up. _Come on, come on…_ Two sweeps and she had it. "Lupin, Ruby Three is padlocked on Nevermore-1. Advise keeping friendlies away from it for five minutes."

"Ruby Three, Lupin, your target distance is 70 miles?" The controller's voice sounded confused.

"Lupin, Ruby Three is a Fox 14."

"Ruby Three, Lupin, you are still…oh." Realization had dawned on the controller. "Roger, Ruby Three. Weapons free at your discretion."

Blake let the radar sweep a few more times to ensure she had a lock, then pressed the trigger twice. "Ruby Three, Fox Three." Below the Tomcat, both AIM-54 Phoenix missiles dropped from their pallets and ignited. They quickly climbed away and headed south at four times the speed of sound, headed for the first Nevermore. Blake felt a little better: at least she could do that much.

* * *

"Ruby Lead, Lupin; advise hold on engaging Nevermore-1. Ruby Three has engaged with Phoenix."

"Well, hot damn," Ruby grinned, and throttled back a little. The Phoenix's heavy warhead was designed for exactly this kind of scenario: it would not kill the Nevermore, but it would significantly weaken it. "That gives me time to come up with some kind of plan."

"Nevermores aren't very bright," Maria advised her. "We used to just salvo missiles into them until they died."

"I know," Ruby replied. "We fought a few of them at Beacon. We can bet the damn Beowolves will be trying to keep us away from the Nevermores…I wonder…" Ruby checked the altitude, removed her oxygen mask, and raised her voice to a yell. "Hey, JINN!"

The console, strapped to Maria's left leg, rattled and switched on. The hologram came to life, though smaller than it had been in the rooms on the ground; Ruby was oafishly disappointed, as she sort of wished JINN would be squeezed inside the canopy and complain about being cramped. Apparently there was apparently some way JINN could sense her—its—surroundings. "Good afternoon, Captain Ruby Rose. How may I assist you? I can see that you are flying. I advise you to shut me down immediately, as distracted flying is highly dangerous."

"Never mind that," Ruby instructed. "How do you kill a Nevermore?"

"Nevermores are semi-stealthy, large GRIMM designed to saturate targets with firepower from a series of eight turrets on the ventral side of—"

"We know that, you naked idiot!" Maria snapped. "How do you shoot one down?"

"There is no reason to insult me. If you are offended by my lack of clothing, I will activate my censoring function." The toga appeared around JINN. "As to your question, the preferred method of shooting down a Nevermore is either with a single large warhead missile, such as an AGM-109 Tomahawk missile, or several missiles to saturate the target. Both methods are flawed, as the Nevermore is equipped with dual purpose defensive cannon and antimissile systems."

"This is dumb," Maria commented. "We already know that."

"JINN," Ruby said, "is there a weak spot on the Nevermore?"

"There is one location, between the Nevermore's engines. It is not well covered by the GRIMM's defensive turrets, and a precise hit with a missile will hit the Nevermore's magazine, which will cause a chain reaction and destroy the GRIMM."

"Nice to know that now!" Maria was infuriated. "All the times I had to go up against one of those damn things, and there was a weakness?"

"It is not known or widely disseminated," JINN explained, "because it is nearly impossible to hit. Such an attack would require a precision beyond the ability of most radars and pilots to guide. Only a precise hit will cause the chain reaction."

"Thanks, JINN!" Ruby called out. "You can shut down now."

"You are welcome, Captain Rose." JINN bowed and shut off as Ruby strapped her mask back on. She winked at Maria in the mirror. "Sounds like a job for silver eyes!"

"Oh God. What have I done?" Maria leaned back in the seat.

* * *

_Boufarik Airbase_

_Algiers, Republic of Algeria_

_1255 Hours Local_

The Mirage IV left the runway, cutting its dragchute, and taxied over to the tarmac, rather than a hardstand or a hangar. The canopy came open as Cordovin pulled the remaining engine's power to idle, and waved for the ground crew's attention. "Sergeant!" she shouted at the closest man.

"General!" The sergeant pointed at the tail, where Pyrrha's cannon hits had shredded the rear fuselage over the left engine. "We can tow you the rest of the way—"

"Never mind that, moron! I still have one good engine and plenty of fuel! Download the conformal drone launched and load an ASMP!" She stared down at him. "And I know we have some of those!"

"Well…yes, General. We didn't have time to load them onto the Mirages-"

"I don't care about that! Load it on the Colossus, now! The clock is ticking, Sergeant, and if you can get it loaded in the next ten minutes, you'll be a _chief_ master sergeant." She leaned halfway out of her seat. "And if it's longer than ten minutes, your next duty assignment will be in Antarctica!" She dropped back into her seat, fuming. "This isn't over yet."

* * *

_South of Algiers_

_1257 Hours Local_

Ruby came out of a cloud bank just to see the spectacular sight of Blake's two Phoenixes, leaving thick smoke trails, dive out of the sky towards the first Nevermore. The first missile, thrown off by the GRIMM's stealthy design, perversely lost lock in the last ten seconds and missed. The second hit as advertised, and the Nevermore shuddered with the hit. It was the first hit on either of the massive GRIMM: around them, the Beowolves fought a battle with the French Mirage 2000s, and had so far managed to keep the fighters away from their charges. Ruby thumbed the radio button. "Manta Lead, Ruby Lead; we're coming in from the north. If you can keep those fighters off of us, we'll get the Nevermores."

"Ruby Lead, Manta," the commander of the Mirages came back, puffing as he pulled hard to avoid a Beowolf missile. "Roger that. _Bonne chance._ " He didn't mind sharing the glory; right now, all he wanted to do was survive and save his city.

"Ruby to Rubies and Norns. We clear on this?"

"Roger," Yang replied. "And for the record, this plan sucks." She was not pleased with the plan, which they'd talked about on the short flight to the Nevermores' position. Ruby would make the run at the supposed weak spot on the first Nevermore, and they would cover her. It had nothing to do with kills or anything like that: to Yang, it seemed very much like a plan to kill her baby sister—to say nothing of losing JINN.

Ruby ignored that. It wasn't the best plan, but they didn't have time to think of a better one. The Nevermore might be stopped by firing every missile they had at it, and it might not be. Algiers was now only twenty miles away. "Okay, here we go." Ruby climbed, flying over the Nevermores, trying to avoid the furball around it. White smoke from missile trails and black smoke from destroyed GRIMM and Mirages criscrossed the sky. The Nevermore's turrets also had a minimum range: they could not detect beyond a certain distance. As she rolled over and watched them, the turrets dotting the top of the bat-shaped GRIMM would rotate and fire at any Mirage that got close.

"Ruby, Qrow. I'm going to cut across the Nevermore's axis and try and draw their fire." Qrow rolled in and dived on the Nevermore. The GRIMM did not detect him until the launch bays on the F-117 opened to launch two Sidewinders; then the turrets as one swiveled in his direction and opened fire. Qrow dodged the curtain of shells as both Sidewinders impacted on the Nevermore's surface.

Ruby pushed the stick forward and _Crescent Rose_ dived, then she leveled out behind the Nevermore. She centered the gunsight on the narrow spot between the baffled engines of the GRIMM; a Sidewinder would not have the punch, so she would have to use an AMRAAM—and fire just at the minimum range of the missile. She divided her attention between the range counter and the Nevermore. Sweat ran into her eyes and she blinked. Her finger closed on the trigger.

"Ruby, break left!"

Ruby did so immediately as she fired, knowing she'd missed. The F-16 twisted out of the way of a Beowolf that fired its cannon; the AMRAAM actually hit the Nevermore, but it was a glancing blow that did little damage. She curved away and the Beowolf followed. Ruby jinked left and then right, opening the range, and climbed as Weiss destroyed the GRIMM with an AMRAAM. "Ruby, Weiss. You're clear."

"Shit," Ruby breathed. "We've got to think of something different." She climbed back into position, knowing she only had three more AMRAAMs—and there was still the other Nevermore.

"Ruby, Weiss. I'll go in with you on the next pass." The Typhoon joined up on her right wing.

"Roger." Ruby took a breath. "You okay back there, Maria?"

"No!" Maria was already regretting not letting Ruby drop her off. Her prospects of dying in bed were rapidly fading.

"Here we go." Ruby rolled in again, this time with Weiss on her wing. The Typhoon opened the distance and fired an AMRAAM at the Nevermore, which quickly got its attention. The turrets swung around and began firing, first at _Myrtenaster_ and then at the F-16; Ruby watched for a moment as the flak seemed to come at her slowly, then speed up as it went past. Once more, she locked on, lined up, and waited an impossible few seconds to close the range—but not too much.

Then out of the corner of one eye, she saw the Typhoon rock with a hit. Weiss pulled off, trailing smoke and Ruby, distracted, fired too late. She immediately threw the F-16 into a climb, rolling and twisting to avoid the gunfire from the Nevermore; her AMRAAM missed entirely, its onboard radar failing to switch on at all. "Weiss!" she shouted.

"Weiss here." She coughed. "I'm hit. Oxygen out. Aircraft tactical." The Typhoon got out of range, and then descended; the Nevermore were flying at 15,000 feet, but if Weiss's onboard oxygen system was hit, she needed to get a little lower.

"Weiss, Ruby, RTB," Ruby ordered. Weiss would be at a disadvantage, and that got pilots killed.

"This is never going to work," Qrow radioed.

"Ruby Lead, Lupin. Distance to Algiers, fifteen miles." It was actually further than that to the city center, but the AWACS was measuring to the suburbs of the city; having a Nevermore crash there would still kill hundreds, including the Cotta-Arcs, who lived on the south side of town.

Ruby bit her lip. There had to be a way. "Ruby, Yang." Her sister interrupted her thoughts. "I'll go in with you on the next run." The F-23 settled in on Ruby's right wing.

"We all will. Qrow from Pyrrha, follow me." The F-22 rolled over and dived, followed by the F-117. "Attacking south to north, across the main axis."

"Ruby, Nora! Attacking from the bottom!" Nora's A-10 was down where it was supposed to be, in the weeds.

"Ruby, Ren. Joining up on your left side." Ren dropped into place.

"Here we go," Ruby said for the third time, pushing a sudden wave of emotion away; they were all going in, just to protect her. The three ship rolled in behind the Nevermore, even as Pyrrha and Qrow roared in from above, the Raptor and the Nighthawk preventing the GRIMM from detecting them once more. Both fired missiles as the turrets fired on them. Just as the Nevermore registered that it was under attack again, it was suddenly hit from below, much harder, as Nora's GAU-8 tore into its belly. The GRIMM's brain now had to divide its attention between two directions at once, and soon a third.

Ren fired two missiles at the Nevermore, which alerted the GRIMM to the threat from behind, but Yang went one better. She not only opened fire, but switched on her navigation lights to full strobe, giving the Nevermore a bright target to fire at. As a result, the overloaded GRIMM concentrated on everyone but Ruby.

"Maria, give me the range count!" Ruby ordered.

Maria leaned forward. "Distance eight miles. Seven. Steady…steady…" Ruby would fire at five miles. "Six." Another long second. "Five!"

Ruby remembered going shooting with her father, and exhaled slowly as she caressed the trigger. "Ruby, Fox Three!" Then she rolled down and away, going under the Nevermore at full speed, clearing the GRIMM's underside by mere feet, the Nevermore suddenly realizing she was there. The ventral turrets left off firing at Nora—who somehow had avoided getting hit by weaving in between the desert ridges below—but could not get their guns up enough to hit Ruby. Then the blunt nose of the GRIMM shot past and Ruby climbed slightly, into the thin envelope where neither ventral nor dorsal turrets could quite reach her, an envelope only a half-mile long.

But by then the Nevermore had much bigger problems. The AMRAAM struck just as the F-16 cleared the GRIMM. JINN had not been wrong: the missile's warhead found a thin strip of aluminum, a weak point where the buried fuselage joined the rear section of the large drone, and detonated. The explosion went forward, blasted through the loading point for the Nevermore's huge cannon magazine, and detonated that as well. Orange flames erupted upwards and downwards along the spine of the GRIMM, finally blowing it in half. The wings folded in on each other and the entire burning remains fell into a low ridge with a final explosion. " _Boo-yah!"_ Ruby yelled out. "Ruby Lead, splash Nevermore-1!"

"That took care of one," Maria commented. "Now we just have to do it again."

"Now we know what we're doing!" Ruby refused to be depressed, or realize that she was seconds and feet from death. Maria marveled at the resilency of youth, forgetting that she had once been every bit the same as Ruby Rose.

Ruby curved the F-16 around, now down to one AMRAAM. The remaining aircraft of Ruby and Norn Flights joined up; none had been hit, despite all the flak. "Lupin, Manta, this is Ruby Lead. We'll make our run on the second Nevermore."

"Ruby Lead, Cordovin! Like hell you will! I'll take it from here!" Ruby craned her head around and saw the Mirage IV climbing out of Bourfarik at a steep rate, considering Cordovin was doing it on one engine. The Mirage leveled out, aimed in the direction of the second Nevermore, and fired something. "Cordovin, Greyhound!"

"Greyhound?" Then Ruby remembered. "Holy shit! Cordovin just launched a frigging _cruise missile!"_

The ASMP was the French equivalent of the Tomahawk: not as large or as long-ranged, but with just as much punch. Cordovin had fired it at a bare minimum range to arm the warhead, but it crossed the distance before the other Nevermore could react, and impacted on the nose of the GRIMM, just to one side. The effect was even more spectacular than Ruby's hit. The Nevermore simply vanished in an explosion so intense and bright that Ruby closed her eyes and turned the F-16 away from it to ride out the shockwave; for a wild moment, she thought that Cordovin had somehow used a nuclear weapon. Pieces from the GRIMM rained down on barren ridges and fields.

"Huh," Maria said. "Should've just done that from the beginning."

"Cordovin, splash Nevermore-2!" Cordovin crowed.

* * *

The battle was somewhat anticlimactic after that. The remaining Beowolves seemed to lose focus, and sort of milled around, making them easy targets for the Mirages; there would be several new aces of the Armee de l'Air that night, and no one would ever claim Boufarik was a boring assignment again. There would be some empty bunks as well; five Mirage pilots would never return. Their memories were toasted along with the newly minted aces.

Ruby and Norn Flights reunited at Boumediene, where a happy but somewhat nervous Etienne Legrand advised them not to take off anywhere: Cordovin was on her way. Ruby wondered just where they were going to fly to: Oscar, Blake, and now Weiss' aircraft were all in need of repair, now. All three had landed without incident.

Ruby stood next to her wingmate. Weiss looked up at _Myrtenaster_ in sorrow. A single cannon shell had hit just behind the canopy. She looked a bit sick; Weiss realized that, a foot to the right, and the shell would've decapitated her. "One of these days I'm going to quit being a fugitive from the law of averages," she said, with a nervous little laugh.

Ruby put an arm around her friend. "No worries, Weiss. Only the good die young, so you're gonna live forever."

Weiss rolled her eyes. "You're a dolt, Ruby Rose." They shared a laugh, then Weiss spotted a convoy come through the gate and drive onto the tarmac where the nine aircraft were drawn up. French flags flapped from the fenders, and the three vehicles came to a halt. An incongrously pink-haired lieutenant alighted from one, and she quickly opened the rear door, then came to attention. From the back stepped Caroline Cordovin. She had taken the time to change into a fresh, dress uniform. Ruby mumbled something under her breath, but came to attention. So did the rest of them—reluctantly, but all the same, one saluted the rank if not the person.

Cordovin stomped forward to about five paces from the nine pilots, snapped to attention, and gave them a salute that audibly cut the air. Then she went to parade rest. "Well." Her flinty eyes roamed over them and settled on Ruby. "What do you have to say for yourselves?"

"We saved your ass?" Yang had never really respected rank from anyone.

Cordovin ignored her, her eyes still on Ruby, who swallowed and took a step forward. "General. Yes, we disobeyed your orders, but we _have_ to get to General Ironwood. Please, ma'am, if you'd just let us explain…" Ruby reasoned that they could always try the reveal-JINN trick again on Cordovin. Arashikaze would probably rip out her hair at that, but Ruby didn't know how else to convince the short general. All of it could have been avoided if Cordovin had listened to them the first time, rather than wave the tricolor and trade insults with Maria.

"It must be important if you're willing to risk everything to get to him. Disobeying direct orders, traveling under false pretenses, causing property damage—the Italians are a little upset; something about roofs being blown in and steeples being damaged on Sardinia…" Blake and Yang both turned red. "To say nothing of damaging my aircraft and other government property." She motioned towards the F-14 and F-18, their rear fuselages battered and blackened.

"Damaging _your_ aircraft?" Oscar spluttered, forgetting Cordovin's rank. "You attacked us!"

Cordovin held up a hand. "However, you also came back to engage the Nevermores, and the AWACS reported to me that you, Captain Xiao Long, managed to destroy a group of White Fang marauders. And…well…." Her stern expression softened a bit, and Cordovin suddenly looked at the ground. "And perhaps I acted hastily." Ruby was careful to say nothing, though Yang punctuated that with a snort of derision. Despite what they had done in trying to sneak past the blockade, Cordovin had attacked Ruby and Norn Flights in international airspace, without provocation. Her career was probably over: if Cordovin was lucky, the French government would give her a medal for downing the second Nevermore with a damaged aircraft, then quietly order her to retire. "So, perhaps…we can call it even?"

"That sounds fine, General," Ruby smiled.

"And…I think we can make an exception to the blockade rule. After all, humanitarian flights are still allowed into Europe by American aircraft. I will notify my government that you are assisting refugees."

"Refugees, ma'am?"

Cordovin pointed to Calavera. "Her, specifically." She threw her old nemesis a savage grin. "I can arrange for you to fly as far as Aviano—I think I can convince the Italians without too much trouble. After that, I'm afraid you're on your own to get to Ironwood, but you seem rather resourceful. I imagine you'll think of something."

"I imagine so, ma'am." Ruby was grinning now as well. "We'll have to stay here a few days and get repairs…"

"So demanding!" Cordovin turned. "Lieutenant Meroune!" The lieutenant snapped to attention. "Notify Commander Sixth Fleet that we will need two replacement engines and a repair crew. Do so immediately and they can be here before nightfall." Meroune saluted and ducked into one of the cars to use the radio.

"You're being generous, Cordo," Maria observed.

"Mistakes were made," Cordovin replied; they noticed she was not about to admit to making a mistake herself, not in front of Maria. "We'll leave it at that, I think. That should be all." Cordovin came to attention, and so did everyone else. She saluted. "As soon as everything is repaired, get the hell out of my AO."

"Yes, ma'am!" Ruby barked.

Cordovin nodded and started to return to her car, but Maria moved forward and grabbed her arm. "Hey, Cordo. Thanks."

The general stared at Maria for a moment, then her mouth quirked into a smile. "I will piss on your grave, Maria Calavera," she said in Spanish.

"Not if I get to your mother's first," Maria replied in French. Cordovin sniffed a laugh, then returned to her vehicle and left.

"Well," Ruby sighed after a few minutes of stunned silence, "I guess we'll have to tell Saphron and Terra we'll be staying for awhile longer."

"Me for a shower," Yang said. Pyrrha laughed, and the pilots started walking towards the hangar. Qrow hung back, then raised his voice. "Hey, Ruby." She stopped and turned. "You did great out there today, kiddo. Your mama would be proud of you—both of you." He nodded at Yang, who winked back. "Just don't go doing that solo shit again, will you? I don't need any help having a heart attack."

"I love you too, Uncle Qrow," Ruby replied, and waved. Then she rejoined her sister and her friends, leaving Qrow with Maria. "You weren't half bad yourself today, Qrow," the former GRIMM Reaper told him.

"They did all the heavy lifting," Qrow said.

"But you were there to help when they asked for it," Maria replied.

"Thanks. And I guess I sort of got to see the GRIMM Reaper in action." He wiggled his eyebrows at her.

"Ha!" Maria laughed. "You should've seen me when I was your age. I would've flown rings around you and curled your toes, boy." She hooked an arm into his. "Let's go get a drink."

"Nah." Qrow began walking alongside her. "I'm putting the cork in the bottle, Colonel. Cold turkey. Won't be easy, but I'm not letting them down again."

"All right then." Maria nodded. "Club soda it is."

* * *

_Sarajevo International Airport Hotel_

_Sarajevo, Yugoslavia_

_31 May 2001_

Cinder Fall looked up from her book as the hotel room door opened up, admitting Neo Politan. "All done," Neo announced. "We can fly to Berlin tomorrow."

"Tegel or Templehof?"

"Templehof," Neo answered. "Our cover is that we are going to an airshow in Stockholm. Flight plan is filed and everything." She took off the bowler hat and tossed it onto the counter next to the television.

"How much did that cost?"

"About two thousand, American." Neo unbuttoned her blouse and threw it haphazardly; it landed close to her suitcase. "The locals know me. I'm grabbing a shower." Without another word, Neo shimmied out her pants and socks, and walked into the bathroom.

Cinder put down her book and thought. Two thousand was far less than she thought it would be. Cinder had forgotten that Neo had once run her own air pirate gang, before she'd fallen in love with Roman Torchwick, presumably, and merged their gangs together. Like most air pirates, Neo's bunch had diversified: the local Bosnians knew her because she had once run guns to them. There was a strong separatist sentiment among both the Bosnians and the Bosnian Serbs, who thoroughly disliked each other, and Neo had gleefully informed Cinder after they had arrived in Sarajevo that she ran guns to both factions. The money was Neo's in any case: Cinder had checked in with Lil' Miss Malachite after arriving in Yugoslavia, and Malachite was arranging a transfer of funds when they reached Berlin—along with a promise that the two of them better recover JINN damned quick, as the criminal leader was getting tired of waiting. Cinder reassured Lil' Miss that JINN would be hers soon enough, then hung up, smiling to herself: if Salem stayed remotely on schedule, Malachite would have a lot more to worry about than a doublecross from Cinder Fall.

That left Neo herself, Cinder thought as the shower cut on. She reached below her pillow, and felt the reassuring weight of the Beretta. It would be easy enough to simply shoot Neo between the eyes as the diminutive assassin came out of the bathroom, then get dressed, leave the hotel, and take off for Berlin in her borrowed F-86—or Cinder could even discard the antique aircraft, though she had grown to like it, and take Neo's more capable Hawk. Then she took her hands off of the pistol: Neo was very intelligent, and undoubtedly suspected Cinder was going to try something like that. There could be a hot reception waiting for her when she took off, courtesy of the Yugoslavian Air and Air Defense Force, or in Berlin. No, Cinder mused, it would be best to wait for a better opportunity. Or simply leave Neo alive; she was proving rather useful, after all.

The shower cut off and Cinder heard Neo humming to herself as she dried off, then walked out of the bathroom naked. She jumped on the bed and lay on her stomach, looking at the room service menu. Cinder went back to her book. "Want some food? I'm paying."

"Of course you are," Cinder replied absently. "Malachite's not giving me anything until we get to Berlin."

"Hmm." Neo ran her finger down the menu.

"You should put some clothes on."

"Why? We're both girls." Neo turned over, as if to prove it. "You sleep naked too."

"Pajamas tend to irritate my burns." Cinder shook her head, then put down the book again. "Neo, why do you want to kill me?"

Neo rolled back over and faced her. "Because you helped kill my dum-dum."

"Roman?" Cinder made sure the pistol was close enough for a quick draw. "He flew into the side of a mountain. From what Mercury and Emerald told me, small arms fire got him; Ruby suckered him into a flak trap. I had nothing to do with it."

Neo idly kicked her feet, balancing her head on her hands. "You were the one who roped us into that little scheme of yours and Salem's. So you're responsible." She smiled. "So yes, I'm going to kill you." Then she hopped out of the bed, so fast, that Cinder grabbed the pistol, but instead she picked up the phone. "But not tonight. I'm getting a burger and a Coke. What do you want?"

"What if I killed you first?" Cinder nodded towards the Beretta.

Neo shrugged. "Then you'll be shot by my Bosnian buddies as soon as you leave the hotel, and they'll dump your corpse into a ravine somewhere. And I won't get to enjoy my burger." She waited until Cinder put the pistol back under her pillow. "Don't worry, Cinder! I'm not going to kill you until I kill Ruby Rose. After that, well, we'll see." She dialed room service. "You want food or not?"

"A hamburger sounds fine. Fanta Orange for me." She listened as Neo made their food orders, hung up, and then jumped back onto the bed. Cinder leaned back in her pillows. "Neo, do you believe in destiny?"

"Sure. Don't you?"

Cinder nodded and returned Neo's smile. "I'm happy to say that I do."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The ASMP (Air-Sol Moyenne Portee) exists; it's the primary French air-delivered nuclear weapon. Since nukes are (supposedly) banned in this AU, the ASMPs here are equipped with conventional warheads--albeit very powerful ones. Cordovin had to get the second Nevermore somehow.
> 
> Neo sure talks a lot in this chapter, but I wanted to end it with those two, as they're getting closer to their objective, too. As mentioned before, Yugoslavia stayed together rather than fly apart in the 1990s, since the Cold War became the GRIMM War, and they decided they'd be better off sticking together. However, as Cinder relates, maybe for not much longer...


	18. Here in the Dark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Battle of Algiers is over, but now the pilots have some things to work out. 
> 
> Will ships sail or will they be burned to the waterline?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This ended up being a longer chapter than I thought it would be, but I wanted a "breather" chapter before we move on to "Mantle" (Poland) and "Atlas" (Berlin), and Ace Ops. Everyone has some things to work out, after all.
> 
> A word of warning: this chapter is where "On RWBY Wings" earns its Mature tag. If you can't handle (textual) nudity and more innuendo than the average episode of Outlander, then you might want to skip this one. And if you don't ship Rosegarden...
> 
> For those of you who also read "Love Hurts," this chapter might feel a little bit like that, and for those who have read "Sunshine and Summertime," Ren and Nora had a very similar scene there--I did copy a sentence or two, but it has a slightly different ending.

_Hotel d'Airport_

_Algiers, Republic of Algeria_

_31 July 2001_

Yang Xiao Long stared out the window of the hotel, over the distant tarmac of Boumediene International Airport. Night had fallen, and from where she was, she could see the blue and white lights of taxiways and runways; she could even see the floodlights on that illuminated the tarmac, and the C-2 Greyhound that had flown in off the USS _Eisenhower_ carrying replacement engines for Oscar's F-18 and Blake's F-14. The repair crews would work overnight so that Ruby and Norn Flights could leave Algeria in less than 48 hours—probably not soon enough for Cordovin, Yang thought. The old woman might have mellowed a bit, but she _had_ tried her best to kill them. In fact, that was the reason why the pilots were at the Hotel d'Airport rather than at the Cotta-Arc residence, although Saphron and Terra were more than happy to let them stay again: Cordovin was afraid the flights might try to sneak away again. There were more than the usual gendarmes around the hotel and airport. Ruby and Norn Flights might be allowed into European airspace now, but only by Cordovin's leave. _Old bag,_ Yang snorted to herself.

Someone knocked on her door, and curious, Yang went over to answer it. It was Blake, standing there in her sleeping kimono; then again, Yang was only wearing the EUROPEAN HEALTH BATHS T-shirt that seemed to be migrating between her and Pyrrha, and her underwear. Blake held up two large bottles of reddish liquid. "Hey," she said with a smile, "do you feel like getting fucked up tonight?"

"Why not?" Yang ushered her friend into the hotel room. "This a private party or can we invite other folks?"

"Sure." Blake paused. "On second thought, no. Maybe this should be just between you and me."

"Uh oh," Yang said with genuine concern. "Are we still cool?"

Blake looked at her strangely, and then waved her hands. "Oh! No—I mean, yes, we're cool. I just…" She set the bottles down on the nightstand and sat on the room's single bed. "I want to get drunk tonight, Yang. I think if I don't, I'm going to have nightmares about today."

"Oh," Yang replied. It was about Adam, then; that had been Yang's original suspicion. "Okay." She grabbed two plastic glasses, sat down on the bed, shooed Blake to the other side, and unwrapped one of the bottles. "Calvados? What's this stuff?"

"French apple brandy."

Yang's eyebrows went up. "Girl, I think we are going to get _seriously_ fucked up tonight." She was about to pour when someone else began knocking on the door. "I'm popular all of a sudden." Yang handed Blake the bottle and padded to the door.

It was Weiss, who pressed the JINN console into Yang's chest. "Do you mind babysitting?" she said without so much as a hello.

"I guess," Yang replied, a little sourly. "Where's Oscar?"

"Helping out with the engine change on his Hornet."

"He _does_ know he's an officer, right? He doesn't have to get his hands dirty."

Weiss shrugged. "That's what he told me when he asked if _I_ could watch JINN tonight." The pilots had agreed that someone had to be with the console at all times. Usually it was Oscar, but if he was going to help with maintenance on his F-18, he couldn't exactly just set JINN down somewhere. "In any case, Pyrrha's going out, so I'm going with her." They'd also agreed not to leave the hotel alone. "Ren and Nora are having dinner, Qrow and Maria are down at the bar telling war stories—they're _not_ drinking, Yang," Weiss reassured her. "I asked. I think your uncle is trying to quit."

"Being in a bar is the wrong place for it," Yang said.

"I know, but he told me to, and I quote, 'mind my own goddamn business.' So I am." She looked past Yang. "Is Blake in there?"

Blake waved. "Hi, Weiss!"

"And what are _you_ two up to?" It was a single white eyebrow that went up this time.

"Orgy," Yang replied without so much as cracking a smile. "We invited some of those strapping young lads from Boufarik over here." Weiss' mouth opened and shut, and she clearly could not tell if Yang was serious or not. Yang grinned at her. "You are _way_ too easy, Weissy. Blake and I are going to get shithammered and talk about our day."

"I see." Weiss clearly did. She looked past Yang and nodded to Blake, who nodded back; both understood the other. "Well, be careful with the Calvados. It's like German applecorn—it kicks, very hard. See you tomorrow."

She began to move off, but Yang stopped her. "Whoa, whoa. Where's Ruby?"

Weiss regarded Yang coolly and dropped her voice a little. "Ruby Rose is my wingperson, and as such, I am sworn to secrecy as to what she is doing tonight. I can neither confirm nor deny that she is on a date."

Yang was confused. "With who? There's only three guys in our little squadron, and one of them is our uncle. The other's Ren, so that leaves Oscar." Realization dawned on Yang. "Oh, I get it. She's going to go get _her_ hands dirty as well. Rubes has always been something of a gearhead." It wouldn't be the first time, Yang reflected; she remembered hearing from Major Oum back at Signal that he'd caught Ruby helping to load missiles on the first _Crescent Rose._ Officers, much less pilots, were not supposed to be doing those things, but Ruby had argued that she might need to learn, just in case—Huntresses were, after all, often operating from austere bases. Yang knew the truth: Ruby just wanted to know how it was done.

"Exactly," Weiss lied smoothly. Actually, what Ruby had told her was that she was going to wait for Oscar, and as soon as he got back, she was taking him out for a late dinner. It was the first time Weiss had noticed her friend getting excited over something that didn't have wings, which was both refreshingly normal and disconcertingly out of character. "Anyway, good night. Don't mess around with JINN."

"Yes, _mom."_ Yang rolled her eyes and shut the door. She set JINN down on the dresser and flopped back into bed with Blake, who had already poured two cups of Calvados. They tapped their cups together and Yang took a swig. Weiss wasn't kidding. "Holy shit." She coughed. "Damn!"

Blake had just sipped hers. "Don't underestimate the French," she advised Yang.

"I won't!" Yang stared at her cup. "God," she said softly.

"It's not that bad."

"No, not this stuff." Yang took another sip. "Ruby. Her on a date…even if it is to help change an engine. I can't…damn."

"She's a grown woman," Blake said.

"I know. And Oscar's a good dude, but…shit. She's still my little sister, you know?" Yang drank more. "I remember her following me around like a puppy. She always wanted to do whatever I was doing. If I was playing with Barbie, she had to play with Barbie. If I was playing kickball, she had to play kickball. And I couldn't even get mad at her, because she was always so damn polite about it." She tossed back the rest of the Calvados, and poured some more, then noticed Blake's expression. "What? This French stuff grows on you."

"No, it's just that I can't see you playing with Barbie." Blake laughed. "I see you as more of a GI Joe person."

"That was Ruby. When she got older, it was GI Joe and Transformers. Dad was so happy, because he always felt awkward playing with dolls when I wanted him to hang out with me. Me, I stuck with Barb." She motioned at Blake. "What about you?"

"Jem. God, I loved that show. I never missed an episode. ' _Jem is my name!'"_ Blake sang.

"I dug Thundercats too," Yang admitted. "I had a thing for Tigra. Whoof, those pecs…I think he was my first crush." They shared a laugh about that. Yang knew Blake was talking around the problem, but that was all right. They would get to Adam Taurus soon enough.

* * *

In actuality, Ruby had lied to Weiss as much as Weiss had lied to Yang. She was not on a date, and she was not helping Oscar change an engine—though if the thought had occurred to her, she probably would have decided that was a much better idea than the one she had.

Ruby Rose was actually planning a seduction.

It had been bothering her all day, to the point where she first considered talking to Weiss, then to Blake, then to Yang. She dismissed her friends in turn: Weiss would call her a stupid hussy, whatever that meant; Blake was clearly wrapped up in her own issues; Yang would simply find Oscar and murder him for daring to have impure thoughts about her little sister. None of them would really understand why Ruby felt the overwhelming need to lose her virginity. Ruby herself didn't understand, though she suspected it was because she'd come very close to dying several times in the past week, and though it was a complete cliché, she didn't want to die a virgin. It was stupid and irresponsible, but Ruby wanted Oscar, and she wanted him now. After all, they probably wouldn't get another chance. When they got to Poland, there was no telling what Ironwood was going to have them do, but it almost certainly would involve fighting. Ruby was okay with that—it was her job, after all—but there probably wouldn't be much chance for romance.

Ruby reached Oscar's room, checked the hallway for passerby—especially passerby she knew—and unlocked the door. She'd gotten the keycard by going to the front desk, telling the person there who she was, and insisting that it was military necessity. The somewhat naïve front desk person had made up a separate keycard for her. Chortling to herself for a nifty bit of sleight of hand, if abuse of her rank, Ruby walked into Oscar's room. He had put his duffel on the chair, laid out his flight suit to be washed later, and changed into his one pair of dungarees, from the duffel's appearance. Ruby herself was wearing her pajamas. She looked in the mirror and decided that those weren't exactly sexy.

She turned this way and that in the mirror, adopting sultry expressions and trying seductive lines—ones she'd learned from movies. They sounded corny in her voice, and the sultry expressions weren't really working either. "Dammit," she grumped aloud. "Why couldn't I have been born with giant gonzangas like Yang, or mysterious eyes like Blake? Or hell, at least Weiss' legs? I look like I'm some teenager." She sighed: the truth was, Ruby Rose was not particularly well-endowed in her bosom; her silver eyes, while different, made her look _more_ childlike rather than less; and though a steady diet of air combat had kept her figure decent enough, she was still shorter than everyone else in her flight. Ruby thought herself rather plain, although there were quite a few people who would disagree, though she wasn't aware of that. She pulled off her bottoms to see if that would help, but her panties were not sexy; they were functional. Though Ruby had her suspicions about her sister, female fighter pilots did not wear thongs.

"All right, fine!" Ruby pulled off her top _and_ her panties, and stood in front of the mirror naked. She nodded. Sometimes the direct approach was best. She wadded up her clothes and tossed them into the dresser, then climbed into the room's only bed. _Perfect,_ she thought. _Prepare yourself, Oscar, because when Ruby Rose fools around, she doesn't fool around!_

She snuggled down into the pillow and worked through the scenario she had in her mind: Oscar would come back, sweaty and smelling of jet fuel and oil (which, to Ruby, were sexy smells), and either be so tired that he would just strip down to his skivvies and climb into bed, or go take a shower. In the former scenario, he'd peel back the covers to reveal a very nude Ruby smiling up at him, the invitation obvious. In the latter, she would sneak out of bed and surprise him in the shower. Either way, the sight of so much female flesh and flesh byproducts desiring him would have the appropriate effect, and they would make sweet love in the bed, or the shower. Ruby wondered if it would hurt, but figured that she was going to have to do this sooner or later, and it definitely had to be sooner. _Pain don't hurt,_ she quoted to herself, and relaxed, running through the rest of her mental checklist. Ruby suddenly got out of bed, quickly opened the dresser, and grabbed the foil-wrapped packet from the waistband of her pajama bottoms; she'd bought it out of a vending machine. She tossed the condom onto the nightstand, got back under the covers, and resumed her checklist.

The problem was, it had been a very long day, and before Ruby reached the end of her checklist, she fell asleep.

* * *

_Le Lieu de l'Amour Restaurant_

_Algiers, Republic of Algeria_

_31 May 2001_

Lie Ren leaned back in his chair. His steak lay half-finished, but he just wanted to look at Nora Valkyrie.

At the moment, Nora was not exactly the most beautiful woman in the world—at least to other people. It wasn't how she was dressed: both her and Ren were wearing their dress uniforms, and Nora flattered USAF dark blue quite well; her two rows of ribbons were surmounted by silver wings, and her lieutenant's bars sparkled in the soft light of the restaurant. It was how she was eating. As Ren watched, Nora chomped down on a piece of steak dripping with sauce, then pulled hard, like a dog with a tough bone. The meat gave way, Nora chewed a few times, then gulped it down, following it with a Coke. The twelve-ounce steak was half gone, and the pile of rice next to it was gargantuan—but Ren knew Nora would eat it all, and have room for dessert. She ate like someone was about to take the food away from her, or it was the last meal she would ever have.

Then again, Ren thought, it was always like that with Nora.

He remembered when they'd first met: Nora had been caught stealing bread by some other Kuroyuri youths, who started to beat on her. Ren had broken the fight up, then helped the half-starved, filthy redhead back to his house. Ren's parents were none too pleased that he had brought a refugee into their home, but had cleaned her up and fed her, finally getting her name. Nora wasn't even sure Valkyrie was her real last name; all she knew was that she was American and her parents had died in a GRIMM attack. She had fled the refugee camp on Sakhalin, where children were largely forgotten in the chaos, and the older children stole freely from the younger ones, who went hungry. Nora was supposed to go back there eventually, but then the Nuckalevee had attacked, and both of them were refugees after that. When the JASDF had asked Ren who Nora was, he had said that she was his adopted sister.

It was refugee camp after orphanage after that, as they struggled to stay together, both of them the anchor to the other, until finally their life had stablized as teenagers. Both had been fascinated by flight, and when they'd reached 17, had gone their separate ways to their respective nations to train to become fighter pilots. They had always corresponded, and somehow Nora had finagled a detachment to China for wargames with the Chinese Unified Air Force. They were as much a team in the air as they were on the ground. As adults, they saw themselves no longer as siblings, but more as partners, and then as lovers. He'd been reluctant at first, afraid Nora would think that he only wanted her body, rather than the wonderful woman she was, but with talk, then hands and lips, Nora had convinced him otherwise. She was no longer the starved waif he'd known: now she was a powerhouse, both from working out and from throwing around the A-10. She had been able to lift Jaune Arc off his feet with one hand. She did not have the statuesque beauty of Pyrrha Nikos, and was cute rather than beautiful—to people not named Lie Ren. To him, Nora Valkyrie was simply the most attractive woman on the planet.

"Why don't you take a picture, it'll last longer." Ren blinked to see Nora looking back at him. He pointed to her chin, and she quickly wiped away the bit of steak sauce there. "What are you staring at?"

"Y-You." His voice broke unexpectedly.

"Awww." Nora slammed back the Coke and motioned the waiter over for more. Once it was delivered, she stabbed at him with her fork. "You aren't eating."

He toyed with his food. He was hungry, but that wasn't why his heart was hammering or his palms were sweaty. When she was distracted by her rice, he surreptitiously felt in a pocket for the little felt box, then quickly brought his hand back up when her eyes went back to him. "Nora…" Ren took a deep breath. "Do…do you love me?"

"Duh!" Nora stuck her tongue out at him and ripped off another piece of steak.

"Nora…please." He reached out and took her free hand in both of his. "Do you love me?"

She put down the steak and fixed him with such an intense stare that his heart thudded faster. "Ren," she said clearly, "I love you. I've loved you ever since we first met."

"Not like that—"

"I loved you as the brother I never had. I loved you as my best friend. And now I love you as my lover. I love you, Lie Ren. Period." She leaned across the table and kissed him; her lips tasted like steak sauce and Coca-Cola, but they were the sweetest thing he'd ever tasted.

Ren's hand went back to his pocket. Then he hesitated, and pulled back. _No,_ he told himself. It wasn't right. He was stupid to have even thought of this. The ring in the little box was cheap, bought in the duty-free store at the airport—the gold might be real, but the diamond was fake. Nora deserved better. Ren resolved to toss the ring into the garbage as soon as he could, and buy Nora one she truly deserved in Berlin or Poland or wherever they ended up.

Nora watched him intently, then shook her head and smiled. She raised her hand and motioned the waiter back over. "Could we get our check, please?" He glanced at them quizzically, then bowed and left.

"Nora, what are you doing?" Ren asked in amazement.

"We're leaving and going back to the hotel."

"But you haven't finished—I haven't finished—why, Nora?" Ren had never known Nora not to clean her plate; she'd gone hungry too often not to.

"Well, you're going to— _carefully—_ tear my uniform off, and I'm going to just as carefully tear your uniform off, and then we're going to make sweet, tender love." She shrugged. "Or you're going to bend me over the bathroom counter and rail me until I'm screaming. Whichever; I'm easy."

Ren was never one to deny Nora that, but he felt stunned, like he'd missed a page in the script or something. "Uh…huh?"

"Silly," Nora grinned at him. "How else are we going to celebrate being engaged?"

* * *

_Parc Commemoratif de Guerre_

_Algiers, Republic of Algeria_

_31 May 2001_

" _Mein Gott,"_ Weiss breathed, staring up at the statue of Jaune Arc. "When you told us, Pyrrha…I didn't really believe it, I think."

"They did a fine job, didn't they?" Pyrrha said, smiling.

"A little too lantern-jawed," Saphron Cotta-Arc said, wiping her eyes. "They made him look too much like Superman."

"Saph!" Terra Cotta-Arc elbowed her wife. "Show respect."

"I am! He was my little brother, okay? I used to braid his hair, and chase him around the house with a stick, and…" Saphron started to cry again. "Oh, dammit. I'm sorry."

"Don't be," Pyrrha told her gently. She was surprised that her own eyes were dry, but in her own way, Pyrrha had already said her goodbyes to her former lover. Since they had expected never to return to Algiers anytime soon, Pyrrha had never really expected to see the statue again, but now that they had some time, she brought Weiss along. She had considered the others, but Ren and Nora had plans, and Pyrrha wasn't sure they wanted to see the statue again. In the end, she'd only invited Weiss, and of course Saphron and Terra, because they were the ones who had known Jaune the best. If the others wanted, Pyrrha would go with them tomorrow, but tonight it was just the four of them.

"How did you know Jaune, Hauptmann Schnee?" Terra asked.

"Weiss," she told the other woman. Weiss regarded the statue. "I met him on that first day at Beacon airbase…and I honestly wasn't impressed. He seemed to be a klutz." She laughed softly. "Of course, I was something of a bitch then. I thought Ruby was inept, Yang's brains were in her breasts, and Blake was just a Faunus. The only one I respected was this one." She pointed at Pyrrha. "Jaune was attracted to me, though. He kept trying these bad pickup lines."

"I can see why he'd be attracted," Terra smiled.

"Terra…" Saphron covered her eyes.

"And he clearly got the bad pickup lines from his oldest sister."

"Terra!" Saphron elbowed Terra this time.

"What? I didn't say they were bad!" Terra winked at Saphron. "I mean, they clearly worked on _me."_

Weiss chortled, knowing that was Terra's intention, to lighten the mood. "Anyway, I dismissed him out of hand. Just a noodle, and a not very smart one at that. And then I overheard him telling Pyrrha that he'd cheated his way into Vytal Flag."

Pyrrha's eyes widened. "You _knew?"_

"I did," Weiss nodded. "But I kept it secret, because I needed Jaune's help in tracking down who Blake really was."

Realization dawned on Pyrrha. "The night you two went on the date to Tomah…"

"It wasn't a date at all, Pyrrha. Just a strategy meeting." Weiss turned a little pink. "Though I _did_ kiss him on the cheek. I suppose he was cuter than I gave him credit for."

"God, I was ready to kill you that night," Pyrrha laughed. "I thought you were seducing him."

Weiss put a hand on her friend's shoulder. "He was always yours, Pyrrha. I think Jaune convinced himself that he wanted me, but it was you that he always cared for."

"It was only four months ago," Pyrrha said. "Four months. It seems like at least a year, if not two. So much loss..."

"And a few victories," Weiss told her. Pyrrha gave her a nod; that was true, as well.

Saphron folded her arms across her chest. "I assume you gave my brother a proper wake."

"We did. Burning piano and all," Weiss said.

"Good." Saphron blew the statue a kiss, then regarded all three of them. "Well, since Adrian has a sitter tonight, and we don't have to work tomorrow, why not have a drink or two? I don't know about Terra, but I want to hear more tales about my brother." She wiggled her eyebrows at Pyrrha, who blushed. "Tangy ones. Like how he swept you off your feet, Pyrrha Nikos."

"Well, um…" Pyrrha wasn't about to tell the story of how they ended up as lovers, or how Jaune had put her to bed after she had gotten horribly drunk and sick on ouzo. She knew that wasn't what Saphron meant, but that was what came to her mind.

"Come along, ladies," Weiss announced, "and I shall tell you the story of how I, Weiss Schnee, was the only sober fighter pilot in the officers' club—and that includes Ruby Rose."

"That little one?" Terra asked. "Oh, I must hear this!"

The four women all walked away from the statue, arms linked. All of them looked back at least once.

* * *

_Hotel d'Airport_

_Algiers, Republic of Algeria_

_1 August 2001_

"Oh God, Yang," Blake sobbed, "I killed him. I killed him."

Yang set down the second bottle of Calvados. It had taken two hours and one and a half bottles, but now Blake was finally talking about what she had wanted to talk about from the beginning. She was also drunk. Yang herself had been quietly sipping at the liquor, letting Blake do most of the drinking; Yang had a buzz going on, but she was not drunk. "We killed him, Blake. I blasted Adam too."

"No, no…" Blake leaned forward, putting her head between her knees. "I did it. I was the one."

"Look, Blakey, does it matter? If we hadn't killed Adam, he would've killed us." It was the third time Yang had said it.

"I know, I know, but…" Blake shivered. "God, why? Why? Why did he turn into a…a monster? He was a good man, Yang! He was a good man."

"Was." To herself, Yang doubted that Adam was ever a good man. Maybe when he had gotten started, he had been genuinely trying to help Faunus achieve equality, but Blake herself had said that Adam grew to enjoy killing, revolution for its own sake, not the Faunus.

"When I first knew him, he was!" Blake insisted. "The Schnees—"

Yang had had just enough drink to put her a bit over the line. "Oh, bullshit, Blake! Don't trot out that 'they made him into a monster' crap! I bet he was already a hater son of a bitch before he got those scars."

"But…he…" The tears were running down Blake's face. "He was a good lover. He taught me how to fly, Yang! He loved me…and I loved him…"

"Yep," Yang agreed. "But he loved killing more. You told me this at Beacon, remember? And you couldn't take it that he was a fucking psycho, so you left, which was the smartest thing you've ever done. And what does he do? _Be a fucking psycho!_ He came after you, Blake. He did it at Beacon and wanted to do it in Japan. Then he tracked us here, somehow. He set up that ambush. He was trying to kill you because he _couldn't have you!"_

"But…" Blake fell forward again, against her knees. "You're right. I know you're right. But I can't just forget him, Yang. I can't forget what we had. I loved him so much."

Yang sighed. Now she felt like a jerk. Tough love only went so far. She put an arm around her friend. "I know, Blakey. It…shit, I don't have the words. I've never loved anyone like that."

The Faunus looked up at her, a bit bleary-eyed. "Never?"

"Nope." Yang shrugged. "I've banged a few guys, Blake. Just, you know…scratch the itch. I see some good looking dude in a bar, and I say, why not? I'm bored, he's cute, and I feel like getting my ashes hauled. But love? Nah, it was fucking. Not love." She chuckled. "Don't know if I'm even built for it. I love Ruby, of course, and Uncle Qrow and Dad and Mom—Summer, not Raven. And I love you and Weissy and Pyr and Nora and Ren, too. But not like you loved Adam." She massaged Blake's neck. "I just wished he'd loved you back."

"I don't understand why he didn't," Blake mused. "That feels pretty good, Yang."

"Because he was an asshole, that's why. Lie down, then."

"Okay." She lay down and loosened the kimono, to allow Yang to massage her neck and shoulders.

"Look, Blake," Yang continued. "My major was aeronautical engineering, not psychology, but I think I know. Adam was a control freak. I don't know; maybe he got sick of being ordered around by the Schnees in that plant or wherever he worked originally—"

"It was a mine," Blake said, her voice a bit muffled.

"Mine, then. So he figures, join the White Fang, get revenge for them fucking up my face, and now _I'm_ the one in control. And once he got a little taste of that, he liked it. He liked seeing the humans run away and beg for mercy, right?"

"Yeah," Blake murmured.

"Yeah," Yang repeated. "So now he's King Shit on Turd Mountain, and he gets to order people around, make people run and beg and scream like he had to once. Then you come along. So he figures, hey, this Blake chick will make a fine recruit, and I do mean _fine_."

Blake sat up a little. "I told you he loved me!" she half-yelled.

"Keep it down." Yang pushed Blake back onto the bed with a groan from the Faunus, and went back to her massage. "Yeah, he loved you. He fell in love with you. But I gotta wonder, Blake—sure, he loved you because you're beautiful, you're young, and you're hotter than Asheville asphalt. But he could kind of mold you into what he wanted you to be, not who you really were. You said it yourself, once, I think…he saw you as a possession, not as a woman."

"Yeah…I think I said that once…" Blake said sleepily.

"And when you left, he got pissed. You weren't under his control. In fact, you were the only person he _couldn't_ control. He could control Ilia because she was scared. He could control the White Fang because he spoke the loudest and he said what they wanted to hear. He could control Sienna because she could use him as her…uh…" Yang couldn't remember the word, then did. "Catspaw? I think that's what the term is. So she could use him as her catspaw and blame him for everything, but really he was controlling her, and…" Yang looked down. "Blake?" She gently shook her friend. "Blaaaake?" No response. Blake was breathing gently, but she'd either fallen asleep or passed out.

Yang readjusted her friend's kimono, and somehow managed to get her turned around, though she left Blake on her stomach. She tucked the covers around her, started to get up to go back to her own room, then decided against it. She pulled the covers over herself, and shut the light off, then leaned over and kissed Blake on her forehead. "Thanks for being my friend, Blakey. I hope tonight helped. I hope I helped." Then she moved down into the bed, stared at the ceiling, and let sleep overtake her.

* * *

Oscar Pine opened the door to his dorm room as the horizon turned orange and pink with the dawn. He'd been up for nearly twenty-four hours, but counted the time on the tarmac as being well spent. At first, the maintenance team sent over from the _Eisenhower_ had resented the officer who was getting underfoot and trying to get greasy and dirty like they were, but gradually, they'd appreciated his help and his willingness to learn. Though Pensacola instructed pilots on how their aircraft worked, this was far more hands-on. It occurred to Oscar that it was skill well-learned, because if this journey west had taught him anything, it was never to take anything for granted. His life might depend on knowing how to change an engine—or load missiles, which he did as well. He hadn't expended any during the battle, but the crew had to offload the Sidewinders and AMRAAMs to do the repairs, so he asked them to show him how to load them back on.

When they'd finished, he'd bought them a case of beer, and though he was exhausted and filthy, the look of respect in the repair crew's eyes made it all worth it. He was feeling less of a newbie ensign and more of a seasoned fighter pilot. In thanks, the crew had asked him if he wanted a personal symbol or something, pointing out the ones emblazoned on everyone else's tail; even Qrow had a light gray single wing on the tails of his F-117. Oscar gave it some thought, then told them. The crew promised to have it finished before they returned to their carrier.

Now all Oscar wanted was a shower and sleep. He closed the door to the room and went into the bathroom, closing the door there before he switched on the light; he never noticed the lump that was Ruby Rose in his bed. Ruby herself was sleeping so soundly that she didn't wake up when the shower cut on, nor did she stir while Oscar soaked, a long "Hollywood Shower" that he would never get on the water-restricted carriers. He got out, dried off, decided there was no point in getting dressed—especially since his dungarees were just as oily, greasy and stained as Ruby had anticipated. Oscar shut the light off in the bathroom and walked naked to the bed. The room was very dark—the curtains were closed—and Oscar's eyes were still adjusting from the bright lights of the bathroom. He didn't notice Ruby as he tossed his clothes in the general direction of the duffel bag, nor did he notice as he sat on the bed—Ruby had rolled over in her sleep, so she was on the opposite side—nor did he notice as he climbed into the bed and pulled the covers over his body.

He _definitely_ noticed when Ruby mumbled something incoherent, rolled back over, and threw her arm over his chest.

In her dreams, Ruby was back home in her bed, a little girl again, and some nice person—Tai or Summer—had put a rather large teddy bear in bed with her. She smiled in her sleep and snuggled up to it. Her face screwed up in confusion. Something was wrong. Teddy bears didn't have skin, or pectoral muscles, or nipples, or a navel, or a…

Luckily she stopped and woke up before she could go any lower than Oscar's navel. He was suddenly wide awake too. For a moment, they stared at each other, Oscar's eyes wide, Ruby's half-shut. "Oh…hey there," she said, still mostly asleep. "'Bout time you got here."

Oscar gave a strangled _eep_ and quickly switched on the bed lamp. The covers still hid most of their bodies, but not Ruby above her stomach. Oscar tried to form words and couldn't. Finally, he managed to squeak out _"Naked!"_

The light finally brought Ruby to semi-consciousness. She blinked a few times, looked down at Oscar, looked up at Oscar, then looked down at herself. "Oh, hey, Oscar, you're naked too." Then she realized that was exactly what she'd come here for. "Whoa, did we have sex?"

"What?" Oscar was still a few steps behind.

Ruby decided that, if the two of them had sex already, there was no point in covering herself, so she sat up and let the covers fall away. Oscar wasn't sure whether to drink in the sight or to flee the room, the hotel, and possibly Algeria, before Yang found out. Or Qrow, which was probably worse. Torn with indecision and seized with fear, he tried looking at everything but Ruby, but being only human, he couldn't help but end up looking at her anyway. Ruby didn't seem the least offended by it.

Ruby rubbed her eyes and finally woke up completely. If they had sex, she expected something would hurt at least a little bit, somewhere, and in any case, unless Oscar was so good that her orgasm had erased her memory, she should remember something. Then she spotted the condom wrapper and saw that it was unbroken. "Oscar," she said, slowly covering herself, "did we?"

"Did we what?" Oscar wasn't stupid, but the unexpected sight of the girl he was very attracted to in his bed stark naked would be enough to reduce anyone's intelligence, temporarily.

"Have sex? Get it on? Bang? Screw? Fu—"

"No!" Oscar insisted. "I just got done with my aircraft, came in here, took a shower, and climbed into bed, and then you threw your arm over me."

"Oh. Well, that explains why you're naked." Ruby slumped. "Dammit."

Oscar sat up in bed, though not too far. Then again, he wondered why _he_ even bothered; this wasn't even the first time Ruby had seen him without his clothes on. "Ruby…did you _want_ to have sex with me?"

"No, Oscar, I normally take off all my clothes and climb into people's beds." Her voice dripped with sarcasm. "Of _course_ I wanted to have sex with you!" She looked down. "I kinda still do…but…oh, hell." She slumped a little more. "This was a mistake. Again. I'm such a doofus."

"But why? I mean, I'm not all that…"

"Yes, you are!" Ruby exclaimed. "I'm the one who's just plain!"

"No, you're not! You're…you're pretty as everything!"

"I'm not! That's why nobody wants me!" Ruby yelled bitterly. "Not like Yang or Blake or Weiss-"

 _"I want you!"_ Oscar yelled back, then clapped his hand over his mouth. "I…uh…"

Whatever witty repartee Oscar or Ruby was going to come up with was rudely interrupted by a hammering on the door. They looked at each other, then Oscar rolled out of bed, covering himself, found some underwear and pulled it on, then walked to the door. He opened it to confront a fuming Weiss, in her nightdress, her eyes bloodshot and her breath smelling of ouzo. "Listen very carefully to me, Oscar," Weiss snarled, poking him in the chest. "You are handsome. Ruby is pretty. Now I don't care if you screw each other or you sit there and stare at each other until the sun goes supernova, but you _will_ be very damn quiet about it. Am I understood, Ensign?"

By habit, he came to attention. "Yes, ma'am!"

"Good." Weiss dropped her voice. "And if you break her heart, Oscar, I will break you like a twig. That's before Yang or Qrow shove you down an intake. Head first."

"Yes, ma'am!"

"And use protection." Weiss pushed him into the room and shut the door.

Oscar stood there dumbfounded for a moment, then turned and shuffled back to the bed. He sat down, utterly spent. "Ruby, I want you," he said quietly. "I do. Really. But is this what we really need?"

"I don't know." Ruby had been certain a few hours before, but now, after sleep, she wondered if it was. Oscar was handsome, at least in her opinion, and a kind person, but it probably wasn't a good idea to sleep with someone one might have to order into deadly combat. Ren and Nora excepted, she thought. And Pyrrha and Jaune, though that hadn't worked out. Of course, there were the rumors about Flynt Coal and Neon Katt…and she was pretty sure Yang had slept with Dove Bronzewing at some point at Beacon, though she wasn't sure where Yang would've found the time…and there was a rumor that Velvet Scarlatina and Yatsuhachi Daichi had a thing going on…

Ruby shook her head. "I don't know," she repeated. "If this was like five hours ago, I'd already have jumped your bones. But now…" She looked away. "You're a good guy, Oscar. I like you a lot. And I think I can trust you to be my first."

"You'd be my first too."

"What…seriously?" Ruby realized she had this idea that all men were experienced, somehow.

"Yeah." Oscar scratched the back of his head. "I mean, the guys used to invite me to the brothels there in Pensacola, or Biloxi, but…I never went. I was too scared."

"Oh, shit." Ruby started to laugh. "Aren't we a pair?"

"Yeah." He started to laugh too, and turned to look at her. "Well, I guess we're even now."

"I guess so." Ruby shrugged, and dropped the covers again. "Here I am." She giggled nervously and then got up. "And here I go. Maybe we need to think about this some more—"

"You can stay." Oscar swallowed involuntarily, but he meant it. "I mean…I don't know…if you want to, but…you can at least sleep here. And then maybe…we can talk about it in the morning. We don't have to get up early." He spread his hands. "I'll be honest, Ruby…I am exhausted. I'd probably just pass out halfway through."

Ruby doubted that, but she could see he was tired. And truth to tell, she was too. Broken sleep was not good sleep. She shrugged helplessly, and climbed back into bed. So did Oscar, who switched off the light. "Well, that's not fair," he whispered.

"What?" Ruby saw his underwear go flying into the wall. "Oh, I… _see."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did they or didn't they?


	19. Battleborn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ruby and Norn Flights head north to Poland. There's a ton of GRIMM in the way, and some newcomers...and maybe an old friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One of these days I'll learn to write shorter chapters, but this had a lot to pack in, as we transition to "Season 7" of canon RWBY-plus some resolving (sort of) of the events of last chapter.
> 
> In the real world, no one is elected to the EU council, but since canon RWBY has an election, in this AU it is-and that council is a tad more powerful than it's real world counterpart. In the world of "RWBY Wings," the European Union probably is more like Churchill's proposed "United States of Europe" than the real one.

_Aviano Air Base_

_Friuli Venezia Giulia Region, Italy_

_2 August 2001_

"There you go, Major Nikos." Colonel Lawrence Kraft handed her the approved flight plan. "You're approved to fly to Poznan—directly. No stops, no deviations. If you land anywhere but Poznan, your aircraft better have lost a wing. The Luftwaffe and the Czech Air Force is aware you're coming."

Pyrrha looked at the flight plan, and the accompanying map. She handed it to Ruby, who whistled lowly. "They're not joking," she said. The map showed a very narrow corridor they were allowed to fly through. It cut northeast over the Alps, through Austria, turned north just west of Vienna, then over the Czech Republic and across the Krkonose Mountains to Poznan.

"No, they're not," Kraft confirmed. "I don't know exactly what happened down there in Algeria, but it caused an international incident—to say nothing about that dogfight over Sardinia. The EU is yelling at President Shawcross, he's yelling at the EU, and we're stuck right in the middle." Kraft shook his head. "Don't get me wrong; I think what you did was awesome, and so does every person in the wing, but—"

"It's precarious," Pyrrha finished.

"Yeah, that's one way to put it," Kraft agreed. "Luckily we're pretty popular here with the Italian government, so they haven't threatened to kick us out of Aviano, like what the Germans threatened to do with Sembach and Ramstein and the rest."

"Just how bad is it?" Ruby asked.

Kraft got up and stared out his window at the assembled F-16s of his command, the 31st Fighter Wing. "Bad. The embargo is hurting the EU more than it's hurting the US. About half of the people of Europe think the EU council are being idiots to their best allies, and the other half wants to kick us all out of Europe headfirst."

"Because of General Ironwood?"

Kraft looked at Ruby. "Between the three of us, Captain, and because you're headed right into the shit…yes. When he activated Reforger, popular opinion was pretty much split between it being exactly the right move to make given the heightened GRIMM threat that the EU wasn't taking seriously, or that General Ironwood was being a paranoid nutcase to cover up for blowing it at Beacon." He chuckled wryly. "And it gets worse. The Brits and the Faunus in Menagerie are already pissed at the EU, so they're siding with us. The Poles think it's great, because they've been wanting more help on the Vistula Barrier than just a token NATO force and the Happy Huntresses. Everyone else is split down the middle, like I said. And oh yes, it's an election year. The rotating open seat on the EU Council is up, and the frontrunners are Jacques Schnee of Germany—who's pushing the embargo the hardest—and Robyn Hill of Poland, despite her being a British-born mercenary pilot, who hates the embargo. Germany and Poland—there's no centuries of lingering hatred between them at all, is there?" The sarcasm was thick enough to cut with a knife.

"What about Greece?" Pyrrha asked quietly.

"Divided, like everyone else." He paused. "And they're divided on you, Major. Some folks think that you're doing what's right to fight the GRIMM. And a whole bunch of others want to brand you a traitor. I wouldn't head home for awhile."

"Thank you," Pyrrha replied, and Ruby gently put a hand on her shoulder. Pyrrha had given up almost everything for her friends.

Kraft waved it off. "Don't mention it. And sorry for the vent there. Ironwood's doing the best he can, just like the rest of us." He reached out and tapped the flight plan. "One last thing. You're going into the Wild West—or East, I guess. The Poles have been hit hard. The Luftwaffe's been helping out as much as they can, but…you're going to be busy. Ironwood's deployed some of his more elite units, but they're still way outnumbered. I expect we may get orders up there ourselves before long." He sighed. "Ever since Beacon, it's like someone has kicked over a damn hornet's nest up there. Anyway…" Kraft put out a hand. "Good luck to you. Maybe see you around."

They shook hands with Kraft, then turned and left, Ruby tapping the flight plan against a leg of her flight suit. Pyrrha looked lost in thought, and Ruby decided not to interrupt her.

* * *

The two of them reached the flightline, where Ruby and Norn Flights waited around their aircraft—repaired in record time by the US Navy team from the _Eisenhower_ and the grateful French Air Force crews at Algiers. They were fully loaded with weapons as well, and had made the flight from Algiers to Aviano that morning. Ruby took a moment to marvel at the view as well—besides the lineup of F-16s, the Alps rose in the distance, so close she felt like she could touch them. Despite what her sister might say, Ruby did appreciate things that weren't made of metal or had wings.

The pilots gathered around Ruby and Pyrrha, who gave them a briefing; each would plug in the coordinates of their flight plan into each aircraft's Inertial Navigation System, but each also made notes on the maps they carried in the kneepads of their flight suits as a backup. Weiss looked pained at the mention of the Luftwaffe ensuring that Ruby and Norn Flights would not deviate from their flight path, and Ruby knew that the former Schnee heiress was undoubtedly feeling guilty. There was no reason for it, but Weiss had to be wondering if her escape from her father had hardened Jacques' desire to continue the embargo. Ruby was also disconcerted by the stare Yang gave her during the entire briefing, but that had been going on for over 24 hours.

When they were finished and began to preflight their aircraft, Yang followed Ruby to her F-16, even as Maria Calavera climbed into the backseat. Ruby knelt to look down the intake and check it, and took a sharp intake of breath as she did so. Yang waited as Ruby finished and stood up—with another wince of pain. "Come clean, Ruby," her older sister ordered.

"About what?" Ruby knew exactly what Yang was talking about, but wasn't going to make it that easy on her.

"Don't give me that. Did you bang Oscar or what?"

Ruby rolled her eyes. "For the second time today, Yang! _No!_ Nothing happened! And even if it did, I'm a grown woman! _God!"_ She brushed past Yang and shook one of the AMRAAMs to make sure it was secure.

"Well, I just want to make sure he didn't hurt you." She pointed in the general direction of Ruby's groin. "Because it hurts the first time-at least it did with me-and you've been moaning and groaning since yesterday. And he better have used protection—"

"Yang." Ruby turned and put both hands on her sister's shoulders. "For the last time. Nothing. Happened. I'm hurting because I pulled a muscle—yes, in my frigging crotch, but I pulled a muscle helping load missiles! You watched me do it! Hell, I helped load up your damn Black Widow!"

"Okay, fine." Yang crossed her arms over her breasts and stared down at her sister in disbelief. "Assuming you're not lying your ass off, explain why Weiss saw you in Oscar's room yesterday morning."

"Has it ever occurred to you that Weiss might be full of shit?" Ruby moved away from Yang to check the wingtip Sidewinder. She nodded at the waiting ground crewman to pull away the cover over the missile's seeker head and the Remove Before Flight pins.

"C'mon, sis. Weiss has no reason to lie."

Ruby stopped walking towards the exhaust. "Yes, Yang. I did spend the night there, and yes, I did sleep in his bed." She held up a finger as Yang's eyes lit up with confirmation. Ruby thumbed at the F-18, now decorated with Oscar's personal marking on the tail, a green symbol of gears within gears. According to Qrow, it had been Ozpin's emblem back in the day, and Oscar had adopted it. "But we kept the covers and some pillows between us, and I left before he woke up. And both of us had our undies on." Ruby looked at the runway. "Yang, I…I needed to be with someone. I couldn't exactly climb into bed with Weiss, especially since she didn't roll in with Pyrrha until around 4 AM, probably half-drunk. And you and Blake were _together—also_ in the same bed, I might add, according to what Weiss told me."

"Yeah, but I wasn't screwing Blake." Yang sighed. Assuming Ruby was telling the truth, she spent the night with Oscar for the same reason Yang had stayed with Blake, in the same bed: the need for human comfort. "I don't believe you, Rubes." Even as she said it, Yang realized that her voice held a note of disbelief—in her own words.

"Well, Yang, I love you very much, but I don't care." Ruby went over to the exhaust and checked it. "If I want to screw Oscar, that's my business, not yours." She gave her sister a surprisingly pitying look. "Yang, I know you're my big sis and you're the best big sis in the whole world, but I am above the age of consent in every state in the Remnant, and you can't keep pretending I'm twelve. Okay?"

"Fine." Yang was not about to admit Ruby was right. Then she reached forward and hugged Ruby. "I love you too, Ruby. I just want to make sure you're gonna be okay. It's what big sisters do."

"Okay, okay—quit messing with my hair, Yang!" Her sister let go, and Ruby pointed at the F-23. "Shouldn't you be preflighting?"

"Yeah, yeah." Yang threw Ruby a half-assed salute, and began to walk away.

"And Yang?" Ruby suddenly looked worried. "Does…uh…does Uncle Qrow know?"

Yang grinned. "Nope." She pointed at her and raised her voice. "Hope he was good, Ruby!"

"Shut up!"

Yang snickered and walked to her F-23, still not convinced Ruby hadn't lost her virginity…but not convinced that she had. It was true that Ruby _had_ helped load missiles, and her story sounded plausible; it would also explain why Oscar was studiously avoiding both Yang and Qrow. Even if nothing happened, just the assumption that something had might lead to Oscar Pine ceasing to exist at either the hands of an enraged big sister or uncle.

Blake was waiting on her. "Well?"

"I don't know, Blakey. Either Ruby's gotten a lot better at lying, or she really didn't have sex with Oscar."

"She's been making funny noises since yesterday morning." Blake was firmly in the Ruby Slept With Oscar camp.

"She says she pulled a muscle loading missiles. Which she _was_ doing." Yang glanced back at the F-16, where Ruby was climbing into the front seat. "I just don't know, Blake. Maybe nothing happened. I mean, nothing happened between us."

"My intention was to get extremely fucked up on calvados and cry over Adam, not have sex with you," Blake pointed out. "And mission accomplished."

"I just don't know," Yang repeated. "Oscar…I mean, I don't blame the kid—" this despite Yang only being four years older than the ensign "—but he's too responsible, and hell, he's too scared of me and Uncle Qrow. I bet he doesn't even have a rubber in his wallet."

"Yang," Blake said with infinite patience, "you _do_ know there's more than one way to have sex?"

* * *

_Over the Czech-Polish Border_

_Near Walbrzych, Poland_

_2 August 2001_

"Ruby, wake up. Radio check."

Ruby blinked her eyes and came awake, then yawned into her oxygen mask. It had been a nice day of flying—had, Ruby corrected herself, as the clouds were gathering to the east—and with nothing to do but follow a strictly laid-out flight path, Ruby had let Maria have some stick time while she sacked out for awhile. The fact that Maria was mostly blind was not really a problem, at least in Ruby's mind: they were flying straight and level at 25,000 feet, and if there was anything pressing, Maria could wake her up. She checked the cockpit clock: she'd been asleep for thirty minutes. She then checked her list of callsigns. "Haisla, Ruby Lead. Radio check, Waypoint Delta."

"Ruby Lead, Haisla; roger that, Waypoint Delta. We were just about to call you," came back a female voice—one of the controllers on the E-3 AWACS orbiting over eastern Germany. "Change course to heading one-nine-zero to new Waypoint Echo." Ruby checked the navigational display: instead of continuing northeast to the Warta River and then entering the downwind leg to Poznan, the AWACS was sending them due north to a town, with the impossible to pronounce name of Miedzyrzecz, where they would turn onto the downwind leg to the airbase from the west rather than the east.

Ruby keyed the mike. "Haisla, Ruby—why the change in course?" She knew she wasn't supposed to ask questions, but it seemed a little unusual. The weather east of Poznan might be cloudy, but there was no rain or storms in the forecast.

"Ruby, Haisla, be advised, heavy GRIMM activity to your east—heading one-six-three, distance fifty miles. Active air scramble at Poznan, Swidnice and Berlin-Tegel."

"Roger," Ruby acknowledged hesitantly. Now she understood: the AWACS was vectoring them away from the GRIMM. She checked the navigational display again, then her fuel gauge. They were a little lower on fuel than she would like, but they were also closer than the bases that were scrambling. The GRIMM were headed for Wroclaw, or even Berlin, though she doubted they would get that close. She hit the radio button again. "Haisla, Ruby, vector us to the GRIMM. We're closest." She gave the AWACS a quick rundown of the makeup of Ruby and Norn Flights.

"Uh, Ruby, Haisla…negative." The controller sounded hesitant. "Maintain course to Waypoint Echo."

Ruby thought for a second, then decided. "Haisla, Ruby is making the intercept." Before the E-3 could reply, Ruby wiggled her wings for her flight's attention and turned east. The eight other aircraft followed her.

"Ruby, Haisla, negative. Proceed to Waypoint Echo!"

"Haisla, Ruby, Judy." That call informed the AWACS that Ruby was taking control of the intercept herself, and the AWACS should limit itself to important information only.

"Ruby, Haisla, negative, you are to—"

Maria hit the radio button. "Haisla, take a hint!" Then to Ruby, she said, "Are you sure you want to do this? I mean, I don't care, sounds like fun, but we don't need to piss anyone else off."

"We didn't come all this way to let the GRIMM toast people!" Ruby exclaimed, then switched over to the flight frequency. "Rubies, Norns, listen up: we've got some GRIMM out there, and we're closest to the intercept. We're deviating, but I'll risk that rather than losing people on the ground. Anyone want to bow out, your course is one-nine-zero to Poznan." No one changed course; Ruby hadn't been expecting them to.

"Ruby Lead, Ruby Three." It was Blake. "GRIMM on scope, range forty-five, bearing three-five-eight. Raid count is…sixteen, probable Beowolves." Blake couldn't shoot at that range: when their aircraft had been reloaded at Algiers, the Navy hadn't been able to replace her expended Phoenixes. She was carrying six AMRAAMs and two Sidewinders this time. Ruby smiled: on her own initiative, Blake had used her Tomcat's radar to detect the GRIMM raid, essentially acting as an AWACS herself.

"Roger that, Ruby Three. Rubies, Norns, go tactical and float. Weapons free, noses warm, music on." She switched on her own radar and electronic countermeasures, even as the nine aircraft spread out into tactical formation. Ruby leaned over and dipped her right wing, watching for a moment as Norn shifted formation; the three heavy ferry tanks under Nora's wings dropped away and she went to lower altitude, as Qrow joined up on Ren. Norn Flight would try to flush quarry down to Nora, with her A-10 acting as a trailer and using the terrain to mask her radar signature.

The clouds hid the GRIMM even from Ruby's vision, but now she picked them up on her radar as well: they were making plenty of electronic noise now, which was deliberate, trying to pull the GRIMM towards them. Evidently, it was working, because the GRIMM had turned, all sixteen flying line abreast, which was typical Beowolf formation. She tried to control her breathing as the two sides came at each other, miles disappearing in seconds. _The merge,_ she thought. She'd done it many times now, but Ruby never got used to the mix of anticipation and fear she felt; the latter wasn't crippling, but a healthy respect for the battle about to happen, and the acknowledgement that she stood a fair chance of dying in the next thirty seconds. She felt hyperaware, supercharged.

"Tanks," Maria barked. _Oops,_ Ruby thought. _So much for being hyperaware._ She punched off the two external tanks, which spiraled away in her slipstream, to fall into some unfortunate Polish farmer's field, and hopefully not their house. Idly, she wondered how much money she'd cost the American taxpayer, with as many drop tanks that she'd let go in the past six months.

"Yang, padlocked!" The time for idle thought was over: Yang had edged out ahead a little, switching positions with Blake, who was dividing her time between the sky and her radar. Now Yang had locked on first. Ruby checked the distance counter on her own radar: thirty miles. Now twenty-eight. Twenty-seven. Twenty-six. Twenty-five. "Yang, Fox Three!" Ruby watched as a tiny object detached from the F-23 and shot away, a little dot of flame: the AMRAAM didn't leave a smoke trail.

The battle was on.

* * *

"Norns, break now!" Pyrrha snapped, and she and Oscar climbed for altitude, even as she locked onto two targets. Qrow held his altitude, waiting for visual range, his F-117 invisible to the GRIMM. Ren went low, dropping chaff behind him, decoying the GRIMM. The Beowolves had accelerated now, trying to close the distance: the AMRAAM gave their opponents a longer reach than the two missiles the drones carried. Pyrrha called out "Pyrrha, Fox Three!" as she pulled the trigger, releasing her own AMRAAM, even as Yang called out "Yang, splash one!" First blood had been drawn.

The distance now closed to within ten miles, and the clouds parted. "Oscar, tally-ho!" Oscar called out, and Pyrrha saw the Beowolves now, their formation splitting up to engage their foes. One pointed itself at her as another one disappeared in a fireball. Pyrrha smiled savagely behind her mask: one more to lay at Salem's feet, one more GRIMM to balance Jaune's life. The Beowolf pointed at her fired a missile, but she ignored it: the drone was evidently confused by the Raptor's stealth, unable to lock on, and in the computerized version of desperation just fired blindly. Another press of the trigger, and another Beowolf exploded, even as Pyrrha throttled back, letting Oscar have the lead.

* * *

Three GRIMM took Ren's bait, two lagging behind the third. Qrow rolled in behind them and fired two Sidewinders, both of which hit, sending the Beowolves down in flames. With instinct more than sight, Qrow broke to the left almost as soon as he fired, and glanced down at the rearward facing camera in his modified Nighthawk: another Beowulf was trying to get in behind him, opening fire with its cannon. Qrow dropped his flaps and slapped the throttle back: the GRIMM overshot, and he switched to his own gun. Twenty millimeter shells chopped into the Beowolf's split tail, even as it tried to dodge; Qrow merely made a slight adjustment, and finished it off. Another charged him head-on: Qrow jinked the F-117 to dodge the shells that came spiraling towards him, and held his course. The Beowolf was programmed to avoid midair collisions, and as it suddenly broke upwards into a climb, Qrow expended the rest of his ammunition shooting it down. He had just shot down four GRIMM, but he had no idea what his total was now; he'd stopped keeping track after Summer Rose had disappeared.

* * *

Nora watched the Beowolf pursuing Ren in his dive, and smiled: he was leading it right into her gunsight. Underneath her flight suit, around her neck with her dogtags, was her engagement ring. She couldn't wear it on her finger, not in the cockpit; there was too much chance it would catch on something, which would be very bad in combat. After they had made gentle love at the hotel, she had lay in bed, admiring the ring in the soft Algerian dawn, and murmuring to herself, "Nora Ren." Ren had laughed at her, reminding her that Asian family names came first, making her Nora Lie once they actually married. She knew that, of course; Nora Ren just sounded better. No one else but Pyrrha knew, for now.

Ren came out of his dive and began to climb, converting altitude to energy. The Beowolf never saw her as Nora opened fire, thrown forward in the straps as her GAU-8 disintegrated the GRIMM.

* * *

Oscar also engaged a Beowolf head on, but as the GRIMM fired a missile, he pulled back the stick, rolled, and launched his own, defeating the drone's missile. His Sidewinder had no trouble guiding, and another GRIMM exploded. "Oscar, splash one!"

"Oscar, break right!" His hands were moving before his brain processed the information. He broke hard, craning his head around to pick up the Beowolf, which had dived, then climbed, either by accident or design putting itself into a perfect position, where Pyrrha could not get to it in time. "Oscar, reverse and dive!" He wrestled the F-18 first into a hard left turn, then into a dive, losing the GRIMM visually as he fought the negative Gs and the redness that appeared on the edges of his vision. "Ruby, Fox Three!" A second passed. "Ruby, splash one!" Oscar rolled out and looked up through his canopy, to see the Beowolf turned into a flaming comet.

He had the briefest visual of Ruby Rose's naked body before he pushed those thoughts to one side; thoughts like that, as good as they were, got fighter pilots killed.

* * *

For her part, Ruby was now completely in the zone; she forgot about Oscar instantly, and Maria, less than two feet behind her, might as well not exist; Maria, for her part, held on, one hand on the side of the canopy and one on JINN.

Ruby slammed the throttle forward, as another GRIMM angled for Weiss, who was stalking the northernmost drone. The distance was gone in seconds, and Ruby switched to guns, then opened fire. It was a tough, 90-degree deflection shot, but her aim was perfect and the Beowolf was sawed in half. Another Beowolf was following the former in trail; she overshot that one, throttled back slightly, then threw the F-16 into a brutal nine-G turn. She bore down, grunting as the G-suit squeezed hard; behind her, Maria slumped, knocked unconscious for a moment by the hard turn. _Crescent Rose_ was now following the second Beowolf, which was blown apart by a Sidewinder. Ruby was breathing like she had run a marathon, but to her surprise, another Beowolf angled for Weiss, at minimum range for an AMRAAM, but she fired anyway. The missile tracked and exploded.

* * *

"DUST, IRIS!" Weiss shouted. Ruby had only seen one Beowolf; for once, she'd missed something, because Weiss was tracking two of them. She made one glance behind, saw Ruby destroy a GRIMM that was getting a little close, then returned her attention to her target. She pulled the trigger. "Weiss, Fox Two." One of the IRIS missiles shot forward. Before it hit, Weiss turned her head a quarter to the left; the DUST system automatically followed her line of sight, locking onto the second target. She fired again, and both Beowolves died within a second of each other. Like Qrow, she made a sudden hard right break to throw off any GRIMM she might not have seen, and spotted two brief contrails to the south. "Ren, Weiss, two bandits, three o'clock high!" She turned in that direction, switching to her AMRAAMs, but Ren was already on the job. One Beowolf was destroyed by a Sidewinder; the other tried to run, and Ren got that one with guns.

* * *

After scoring the first kill of the engagement, Yang hung back, waiting to pick off any stragglers, or any GRIMM that broke from the furball. It was impossible to make sense of it: aircraft and GRIMM twisted and changed altitude so fast that no human eye—not even silver ones—could follow it.

"Yang, check the bandits to the north!" Blake didn't identify herself, but she didn't have to; Yang knew her voice instantly, even muffled by a mask and the radio. She turned north and spotted two more Beowolves angling in from the north—stragglers from the main formation. Then Yang's eyes widened, as she realized the two GRIMM weren't stragglers at all: they were forward scouts. Behind them were even more Beowolves, at least a dozen more. The unexpected battle was becoming one of the biggest ones she'd ever been in.

"Ruby Flight, Haisla." The AWACS broke radio silence. "Bandits, bearing zero-seven-one, raid count fifteen. Time is 1602 Zulu. Haisla out."

"Oh, shit," Yang breathed. "Blake, join up!" Yang locked onto one of the leading GRIMM and fired an AMRAAM. "Yang, Fox Three!"

"Yang, break left!" Yang snapped the stick into her left knee, even as cannon shells sailed past where her head had been two seconds before. A quick glance behind: a Beowolf had come out of nowhere, and was following her into the break. Behind it, however, she saw _Gambol Shroud_ , wings out, dropping in behind the GRIMM. Despite the tight turn, the Beowolf was staying with her. "Yang, Blake. On my mark. Three. Two. One." Yang knew what Blake was thinking and suddenly rolled over and dived. It cleared her away from the Beowolf, and Blake blasted it with a Sidewinder a second later. They both climbed, turning to get altitude, as the new GRIMM formation closed in from the north.

"Ruby aircraft north of furball, Nickel Lead, squawk flash." It was a new voice, not Haisla. _Reinforcements,_ Yang thought, for once glad of the help. Yang quickly checked her Identification Friend or Foe; it was on. She hadn't bothered turning it off, since the GRIMM knew who was who anyway. "Ruby Four, sweet," she called out to whoever the newcomers were, letting them know her IFF was on. Blake chimed in a second later.

"Nickel, Fox Three multiple." Yang watched, dumbfounded, as suddenly her radar lit up. She looked to the west, and saw a cloud of missile trails, more than she'd ever seen in her life, and throttled back, afraid to get too close: they were AMRAAMs, and sometimes the AMRAAM would engage anything its tiny electronic brain detected. She watched in awe as the GRIMM formation simply disappeared. Only a single Beowolf survived, trailing smoke from a near miss. "Blake, Fox Three." A final AMRAAM fired from the F-14, and a second later, the GRIMM exploded.

And just like that, the sky was empty.

* * *

Ruby had been looking to the north as well, and saw the cloud of missiles. She blinked, did a quick check of the sky around her, then watched as the Beowolves were massacred. "It can't be," she whispered.

"What?" Maria questioned, awake again. "Probably a wall of Fifteens out there." It was a favorite tactic of F-15 squadrons: line up and salvo missiles like artillery. It usually worked; the AMRAAM had been developed partially with the Wall of Eagles in mind.

"It isn't," Ruby corrected her. "Radar scope is clean. I don't have any targets there." She hit the mike button. "Ruby Flight, join on me. Norns, follow as possible." She listened for a moment as Pyrrha checked in her flight and gathered them together. Weiss curved in to take up position on Ruby's right wing, and they caught up to Yang and Blake. "Ruby, Nickel is at your eleven o'clock high, twelve miles," Blake radioed. There were actual clouds in that direction, but they flew over the tops of the fluffy cumulus, and Ruby saw it. "Oh my God," she said. "Oh my God."

It was a B-1B Lancer. There was no mistaking it: nothing in the world looked like the swing-winged bomber, and nothing else was close enough to have fired the AMRAAM cluster. Ruby had seen that before: over Lake Michigan, four months before. The problem was, Penny Polendina was dead; Pyrrha had been forced to kill her when the Black Queen computer virus had taken control of her modified B-1.

Ruby was about to try and contact the Lancer, even as it turned northwest, when yet another new voice came up on the net. "Ruby Lead, Norn Lead, this is Ace Lead, are you receiving this channel?" It was a male voice, authoritative; not Ironwood, and certainly not Penny.

"Ace Lead, Ruby Lead, roger that, reading you five-by." Pyrrha acknowledged as well a moment later; she was still some miles behind, and likely had not seen the B-1. Ruby's radar was still clear; it was not picking up the B-1—which wasn't that surprising; Ruby remembered Penny saying that the Paladin Project B-1 was hard to track with radar. Probably the synthetic-aperature radars carried by Yang, Pyrrha, Weiss and Blake could detect it, but her slightly older type couldn't.

"Ruby Lead, Norn Lead, this is Ace Lead, join up on course heading one-one-six. We will be escorting you to Berlin-Tegel."

"Like hell, Ace Lead," Ruby replied. "Our orders are to proceed to Poznan."

"Ruby Lead, those orders are superseded. Assume close formation and proceed best speed. Authorization is Jehovah."

"Jehovah," Ruby said without keying the mike. "Shit. That's Ironwood." She mumbled something unprintable, then radioed, "Roger that, Ace. Coming left, heading one-one-six." She settled onto the course, then checked her fuel. It would be a little tight, but they would make it. She thought about declaring a fuel emergency, and wondered if anyone else would. No one did, and she decided that whoever this Ace Lead was, he wasn't going to be fooled by that ploy. "Ace Lead, Ruby Lead, no joy." Despite looking around, she couldn't see whoever that was. In the distance, the B-1 was pulling away, though she noticed it was on the same course; her heart leapt, because that might mean the Lancer—Nickel—was headed to Berlin-Tegel as well.

"Ruby, Norn," Pyrrha said. "Ace is behind and to the left." Ruby dipped her left wing and looked. Her eyes went wide. "Whoa! Check that out, Maria! Five o'clock low, twelve miles!"

"I can't, you moron," Maria growled. She was lucky if she could see one mile with her good eye.

"Sorry, sorry." There were five of them, but that wasn't what so impressed Ruby. All five aircraft were a dark gray, and all five were F-35A Lightning IIs, which was doubly impressive, since that aircraft wasn't even supposed to be out of prototype stage yet. "F-35s! Wow!"

"Ruby Lead, Ruby Two, watch your drift." Weiss noticed the F-16 was beginning a gentle left turn, as Ruby tried to get a better view. The F-16 quickly resumed course.

As Ruby and Norn Flight joined up, the F-35s split their formation, two on either side and slightly behind, while the lead aircraft followed at three miles. Clearly, they were not going to take no for an answer, and Ruby wondered if they were cleared to fire.

* * *

_Berlin-Tegel International Airport_

_Berlin, Federal Republic of Germany_

_2 August 2001_

The sun was beginning to go down when they arrived at Berlin-Tegel, slightly northwest of the urban sprawl of Berlin. Ruby took a little time to sightsee: the city, completely destroyed in the Second World War, had somehow managed to escape destruction in the Third, despite being one of the war's causes. She remembered Professor Oobleck's lecture—which shocked Ruby a little, since she had struggled to stay awake in those classes—about how the American and Russian commanders of West and East Berlin, caught completely by surprise by the nuclear exchange, had agreed not to fire on each other until they knew what had happened. By that time, the war was over, and the short-lived Berlin Wall came down almost as an afterthought.

Ace Flight—she supposed that was their callsign—remained in position the whole way, but when they reached the airport, Ruby had said the hell with it, and led her flight in a sharp pass over the airport, snapping into a crisp break into the landing pattern, over the center of the runways, shaking the combination airbase and airport. Pyrrha went one better: her pass was every bit as sharp and crisp, but it was also a hundred feet lower. All nine aircraft landed, followed at a polite distance by Ace Flight. As Ruby taxied to their designated parking spot, she saw the B-1 parked there as well. She also noticed about a hundred guards, Luftwaffe air police by the uniform, lined up and waiting. "What the fuck?" Ruby hissed. "What are they doing here? We didn't do anything wrong!"

"Maybe it's a honor guard." Maria cackled ironically. "Or maybe they're all here for little ol' me."

Ruby kept up a litany of curse words in three languages as she brought the F-16 to a halt and powered down. As she raised the canopy, ground crew trotted out to chock the wheels. Still grumbling, she unstrapped and unhooked everything, then climbed down the ladder, taking off her helmet. Her hair stood up in wild directions, and she felt the sweat trickling down the back of her neck. Once everyone was dismounted from their aircraft, the policemen began to close in, hands on weapons. One officer, wearing the same rank as Weiss, detached herself from the line and walked up to Ruby. She came to attention and saluted smartly. "Hauptmann Ruby Rose? I am Hauptmann Wolff. I regret to say you are under arrest. Please give up your sidearm."

Ruby returned the salute. "Tell me the charge. We haven't done anything wrong."

Wolff looked a bit embarassed. "I am sorry, Hauptmann, but I have orders. You are to be placed under arrest, and you are to give up your sidearm."

"Tell me the charge," Ruby repeated. "Or we're not going anywhere."

Pyrrha came walking up to them. "Hauptmann? What is the problem here? Why are you doing this?"

Wolff saluted again. Pyrrha didn't return it. "Major, you are to be arrested. This is not something I wish to do, but you are—"

"I want to see your superior officer. Now." Pyrrha's voice was edged with steel. "And you may notice I outrank you, Hauptmann."

Wolff looked a little lost, but all three women turned at a new arrival—wearing a worn flight suit, with USAF wings on his nametag and major's oakleaves on his shoulders. He was tall, square-jawed, his brown hair slicked back by his helmet and with surprisingly gentle blue eyes. Ruby swallowed involuntarily; Oscar was cute, but whoever this was, he was strikingly handsome. When he smiled, that made it even better. "Hauptmann," he said, "I think we can dispense with the handcuffs. Captain Rose, Major Nikos, I'm afraid you will have to give up those pistols." He spotted Maria, came to attention, and saluted her. "Lieutenant Colonel Calavera. A pleasure. I'm Major Clover Ebi. I'll need that from you, if you please." He nodded at JINN, which she cradled to her chest. "Please, Colonel. I have orders from General Ironwood to deliver that, and all of you, to his headquarters at Spandau."

Maria sighed and handed over the console. Ruby gave her a look, and the old woman shrugged. "What do you want me to do, fight him?"

Clover laughed. "I wouldn't want to do that to the GRIMM Reaper." He turned that dazzling smile on Ruby and Pyrrha. "Ladies, please. You have my assurances that no one is going to be harmed. Hauptmann Wolff needs to escort us to the general's HQ, and that's all." He emphasized the last, and Wolff nodded quickly.

"Before we go," Ruby said, because it was clear that they were going one way or the other, "I want to speak to the pilot of that B-1. And don't tell me there's a crew."

Clover hesitated. "I don't think so, Captain. Sorry, but it's top secret, and…well, hell. Never mind."

Ruby's breath caught in her throat. A single figure had come out from behind the B-1's starboard engine pod, and was walking briskly towards them. Pyrrha went pale. " _Isos Christos,_ " she breathed.

"Seems appropriate," Ruby said, surprised she could even talk, because there was no mistaking the reddish hair and strawberries-and-cream freckled complexion of Penny Polendina. Then Penny spotted Ruby, and her face split into a smile. She jogged up to Ruby and Pyrrha. "Salutations!"

"P-Penny?" Ruby stammered. Pyrrha took a step back, like she had seen a ghost, her eyes filling with tears.

"That's me," Penny answered happily. She cocked her head to one side. "Sorry, but do I know you?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In reality, the Berlin Wall lasted for almost 30 years...and the F-35 didn't fly until 2008. However, this is a different story, and it made sense to me that "Ace Flight" would get only the best. Since Weiss already flies the Typhoon and Pyrrha's got the Raptor, Ace Ops gets five brand-spanking new F-35s. We can also assume it didn't have quite the teething problems of the real one...or does it?
> 
> And anyone with a knowledge of history might see Ironwood's choice of headquarters to be a tad ominous.


	20. The Way of the Warrior

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ruby and Norn Flights meet up with Ironwood at Spandau. What is Ironwood planning, and why is he being so secretive about it?
> 
> And who are those Ace Flight guys? (And girls?)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A shorter chapter this time, as the last few have been really long. I was going to have Ruby and Company meet Pietro Polendina this time, but decided to let that wait until next time, to try and keep the page count more manageable.

_Tactical Headquarters, Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR)_

_Spandau Castle, Berlin, Federal Republic of Germany_

_2 August 2001_

It was dark by the time the pilots of Ruby and Norn Flights reached Spandau, though it was only around fifteen minutes between Spandau and Berlin-Tegel. They were shuttled there by a convoy of SUVs, with each pilot between two armed Luftwaffe policemen. Ruby sat in the first car, with Hauptmann Wolff; in front of her sat Penny Polendina—or who Ruby assumed was Penny. She would occasionally glance back at Ruby, as if trying to remember her, then return looking out the window. Ruby felt depressed: getting practically arrested was bad enough, but being reunited with a friend she had seen die, and yet who didn't know her anymore, made things much worse. She could only imagine how Pyrrha was feeling.

They pulled up in front of the castle, which was a misnomer: Spandau had been a prison, though it certainly looked like a castle, with crenellated towers and high walls. Guards in US Army uniform stood on guard outside the prison gate, which was opened to let them through. The pilots got out of the SUVs, still with their guards in tow. Penny came with them, but Ruby didn't see Clover Ebi. She noticed Penny was holding the JINN console.

"Spandau Prison," Blake said, staring up at the wall. "I'd heard of this place, but never thought I'd see it."

"Didn't this used to be a Nazi prison?" Yang asked. She looked straight at Wolff when she said it; the Hauptmann stiffened and glared back at her.

"Yes," Blake replied, with a warning glance at her friend. "During World War II. After the war, it was used to house Nazi war criminals. I think the last one was executed here right after the Third World War."

"Rudolf Hess, in 1965. _We_ executed him, we _Germans_ ," Wolff informed her, her voice tight. "Please follow me, and do not speak."

They walked through the gates, past the high double walls, topped with razor wire. They them entered the prison itself, and hadn't gone far by the time they heard the deep voice of General James Ironwood. "I tell you, Winter, if I have to sit through one more damned meeting like that…" The voice got closer, and Ironwood turned the corner. He stopped when he saw the pilots.

Ruby saw that Ironwood had changed some from when she had met him at Beacon: not quite five months had passed, but the general looked older. The gray at his temples had gotten wider, though the beard he had grown remained coal black. He was dressed in his formal USAF uniform, with four stars glittering on his shoulders, silver command wings over an impressive four rows of ribbons. She'd forgotten how tall Ironwood was, though with Ruby's somewhat diminutive height, everyone seemed taller.

It said something for Ironwood's presence that Ruby didn't even notice Winter Schnee standing in his shadow; she too was dressed in her formal uniform. Weiss did, however: "Winter!"

"Weiss?" Winter's façade broke just for a second: the elder Schnee sister started to smile. Just as quickly, however, the smile was covered with Winter's usual faintly annoyed expression. Then she noticed the guards. "What is the meaning of this?"

Wolff stepped forward. "Oberst Schnee, I am Hauptmann Wolff, reporting as—"

"Your job was to _escort_ them here, not treat them as prisoners!" Winter snapped. Wolff wilted under that glacial stare. "You have ten seconds to remove yourself from this headquarters, or your next duty assignment will be on a border patrol tower in the Alps!"

Wolff snapped to attention and then beat a very hasty retreat. Winter shook her head in disgust, while Ironwood smothered a smile. "Follow me," he said.

They followed him down a long hallway that echoed with their footsteps, then entered what had been the prison commandant's office. It was fairly spartan for someone with Ironwood's rank, with only a single large desk, flanked by American and NATO flags, and a large map table to one side of it. Ironwood took a seat; there was one other chair, but no one took it—no one, that is, until Maria Calavera dropped into it. "Jet lag," she told Ironwood, the dare-you-to-do-something tone in her voice.

"Certainly, Colonel Calavera. It's good to see you again." Ironwood looked apologetic, as Penny and Winter took up position at parade rest on either side of the desk. "It's good to see all of you."

Yang spared the departed Wolff a baleful look. "Our reception didn't really show that."

"Yes, I'm sorry. Wolff is a good woman, but she can get…overly enthusiastic at times in executing orders. I sincerely regret your treatment." The general chuckled. "Though you _did_ manage to violate your orders only a few hours after Colonel Kraft gave them to you. And then there was that debacle down there in Algeria."

Ruby stepped forward. "That was my fault, General. There were…well…mitigating circumstances."

Ironwood laughed. "Well, I'm not going to fault fighters from finding a fight—and definitely not when they win it. You embarrassed Ace Flight a bit—they were tasked in taking out that GRIMM attack, along with Penny here." He noticed Ruby's expression, and Pyrrha's. "You have some questions, I'm sure."

"About those, um, incidents…" Ruby began.

"Water under the bridge," Ironwood reassured her. "Actually, I thought it was pretty nifty, myself."

"Though I cannot believe that _you_ allowed this to happen, Major Branwen," Winter said coldly to Qrow.

Qrow only grinned back. "You try stopping these kids when they have their mind set on something." He nodded to Ironwood. "Speaking of which, Jimmy—" Ironwood did not react to Qrow's flippant tone "—we have some information for you that's rather, well, confidential." He inclined his head at Penny.

"Is it about JINN? Or maybe the Winter Maiden?" Penny chirped.

"You told her?" Qrow figured that Winter knew about both JINN and the Maiden satellites, but not Penny—whichever version of her this was.

Ironwood held out his hands, and Penny gave him the JINN console. "Qrow, did you really think you were the only one who got to work after Beacon? You or Arashikaze? With Ozpin gone, I needed my own people I could trust, so yes, both Penny and Winter were read in. Ace Flight as well." He patted the console. "I'm glad you people made it here with this. Hell, I wouldn't have blamed you if you'd shot your way into Europe, to get JINN here. We're going to need it." Ironwood's easy attitude evaporated in a moment. "Oz held the line against Salem, and kept victory from out of her claws, but it's been a holding action at best. Now I think we can destroy her."

"Sir," Pyrrha asked, "if I may…what is the condition of the Maiden bearer?"

"She is secure and in stable condition," Winter replied.

"Stable condition?" Yang wanted to know.

Qrow was the one who answered. "Well…let's just say that the Winter Maiden isn't exactly a young woman. She's older than Maria here."

Calavera laughed. "Oh, I know who you're talking about, I imagine." She caught Ironwood's glare. "But I will keep my mouth shut."

It was quiet in the office for a long moment, then Ironwood steepled his hands in front of him on his desk. "Look, I know how all this looks. Bringing three fresh divisions here under Reforger, without the permission of the EU. The embargo that the EU set up as a result of Beacon _and_ my actions. I imagine I don't seem to be the most trustworthy man right now."

"Then with all due respect, General, why not send the divisions home?" Blake asked. "From what I heard while in Menagerie, the biggest GRIMM threat has been aerial, not ground-based. If anything else, it seems that NATO and the EU would be better served by moving more air assets here, not three US Army divisions—especially when you've already got two here."

"Technically, three," Ironwood corrected her. "But while that's an astute observation, Captain Belladonna, I believe that Salem intends to strike Europe next, and this time, we're not going to hold them at the Vistula. So, despite what the Europeans want, despite even what _I_ want, I need plenty of forces on hand, here, protecting people—whether they understand it or not."

"Permission to speak freely, sir?" Yang asked.

"That's never stopped you before, Captain Long," Ironwood smiled.

"You're not really protecting Europe, sir. It's making everyone hate you."

Ironwood was quiet, then he slowly nodded. "I know, Captain. But that's a price I'm willing to pay. If I'm wrong, then the EU can hate me all it likes. If I'm right, then we stop Salem from overrunning Europe, and inflicting _another_ defeat on us." He stood up and walked around the desk. "We underestimated Salem at Beacon, ladies and gentlemen, and I will be _damned_ if I let it happen again. Not on my watch."

He motioned them over to the map table, and motioned at Winter to close the heavy drapes on the latticed windows behind the desk. He flipped a few switches, illuminating a map of eastern Europe. "Just as all of you have been entrusted with the knowledge of Salem's existence, I need you all to trust me. I have a plan." He smiled again at Yang. "Yes, Captain Long, I know what your father would say—'Custer had a plan too.' Hopefully I'll do a little better with mine." He tapped at the map. "Ozpin believed the best way to fight Salem was to do so in secret. Whether that was the right choice isn't for me to say, but I think it's time for a new approach."

"What do you suggest, sir?" Pyrrha asked.

Ironwood looked at Ruby. "You're an aviation enthusiast, Captain Rose."

"Aviation nutcase, more like," Yang snorted. Blake elbowed Yang in the ribs.

"Er, yes, sir," Ruby replied, sparing her sister a scathing glance.

"Then tell me what you know about Commando Solo."

Ruby knew the answer instantly. "Oh! Well, let's see…that's the EC-130E. It can broadcast across all frequencies, including radio and TV. It can even override and break into radio and TV, too."

"Very good, Captain," Ironwood said. "I have only one here in Europe, unfortunately, and though it's basically a C-130 transport, the antennae on the Commando Solo are pretty obvious…so I'm not going to get one to slip through the blockade. But one is all I need, and right now, that bird is the most important aircraft in the world." He tapped the map, at Poznan. "It's based here, at my forward headquarters. Normally it would be here in Berlin, or Sembach or Rhein-Main, but honestly…I don't want it to be that far away from where I am. I have three headquarters, right now—my normal one in Brussels; this one here at Spandau, and my forward HQ at Poznan."

"James, I don't get it," Qrow said. "You don't need six divisions for that. Hell, you don't even need one."

Ironwood laughed wryly. "I will for the next part. I'm going to tell the world about Salem."

There was stunned silence around the table. "Oh shit," Qrow whispered. " _That's_ why you deployed the Reforger divisions—to handle the panic that's going to result."

"Actually, no," Ironwood replied. "Pretty sure the EU _really_ wouldn't like it if the US Army was putting down riots in Paris or Amsterdam with M1 tanks. That's a concern, but I'm more worried about Salem's reaction. When the world knows about her, she's going to hit us with everything she has." He stabbed down at Poland. "Right here. The North German Plain. The same invasion route used by armies for centuries. And if we're not ready, she'll drive to the English Channel."

"But the world will know," Nora protested. "They'll unite against her!"

"Some will," Ren disagreed. "Others will try to make deals with her. If she overruns Europe, there will be many who will try to appease Salem, or even join her." Ironwood inclined his head at Ren's logic.

"The panic will be tremendous," Weiss said, paler than usual.

"Yes," Winter told her sister, "but we are prepared for it. And the panic will end when Salem is stopped, and defeated, along the Vistula line."

"Or further back," Ironwood added. "We intend a defense in depth. But Salem won't get past the Oder." He ran his fingers through his hair. "It's risky, but trying to hide the truth from the world will eventually kill us all."

"So let me get this straight," Maria spoke up; she had not moved from her chair. "You're going to send up the Commando Solo, override every television and radio station in Europe, and tell everyone that there's this crazy Russian behind the GRIMM, and she wants to take over the world?" Ironwood nodded. "First of all, why not just ask for the broadcast time? Second, don't you think everyone's going to think you're fucking crazy?"

Ironwood leaned against his desk. "To answer the first question: no, because of the second. And the fact that Jacques Schnee owns most of the news outfits in both Germany and France. The BBC is a different story, but I'd have to convince Prime Minister Winkle to let me use it. It's better this way." He shrugged. "And yes, people may think I am indeed fucking crazy. But I'll take the chance."

"Oz spent a long time keeping this secret, Jimmy," Qrow told him.

"I know. But since Beacon, things have changed. Without Ozpin to guide us, all I can do is use my best judgement, and hope I'm right." He noticed Oscar, who had been standing in the back, feeling overwhelmed. "At least Ozpin's not _completely_ gone. How are you, Ensign Pine?"

"Er, I'm fine, sir. Thanks for asking."

"Your father's last words to me were to let you know how proud he was of you. I would've come down to Pensacola myself, but…" Ironwood motioned around the room. "I had to leave it to Arashikaze."

"That's all right, sir." Oscar wanted Ironwood to stop talking about his father. He was still processing who Ozpin was, and still wondering if he had been accepted to Pensacola because of his own flying ability, or simply to appease his father. He knew he was here only because of Ozpin. Oscar fought down the resentment; he would worry about that later.

"When I get a spare minute, I'd like to talk to you about your father," Ironwood said. "There's a lot about him you don't know." He glanced around the room. "There's a lot that _none_ of you know."

"Yes, sir. Of course, sir."

Something in the way Oscar replied must have aroused Ironwood's suspicion, because he glanced at the JINN console, still on his desk. "You didn't turn that thing on, did you?"

"No, sir," Ruby answered before Oscar could. "I admit it was tempting, but we didn't." Blake and Yang shared a glance, but neither they nor anyone else said anything more. Ruby had just lied to Ironwood's face, but she was also saving Oscar Pine's career—and probably their own as well.

"Good. From what Ozpin told me, JINN pretty much knows everything there is to know." He pushed off his desk, picked up the console, weighed it, then handed it to Ruby. Her mouth fell open. "You're giving it back to me?" She was so stunned, she forgot to add the sir.

"After what happened today, I don't want you to think I'm keeping anything from you, especially as important as this. For the time being, I think JINN is safest with the people who brought it here."

"Um…thank you. Um, sir!" Ruby tucked JINN under one arm.

"We need to work together if we're going to beat Salem." He smiled. "And now for the moment you've all been waiting for: your new orders." He nodded to Winter.

"Ruby and Norn Flights—and you, Major Branwen…" Winter sounded like she was going to throw up. "You will be based at Poznan, co-located with Ace Flight. However, given your very long journey, you are given five days off here in Berlin. Enjoy yourselves." She made it sound like an order. "And while you are doing so, we will perform some upgrades to your equipment, where needed."

"Such as?" Pyrrha wasn't sure her F-22 needed any upgrades.

"Installation of DUST on some aircraft. Helmet-cued, off-boresight capability. Meteor missiles replacing AMRAAM where possible—it is a much faster, longer-ranged missile. Upgraded software. Oh yes—and for you, Captain Rose, I believe you would like your F-16C back."

"Would I!" Ruby practically leapt up and down at the thought of having her actual _Crescent Rose_ back. Maria suppressed a sigh; no more air combat for her. Then again, given the ache in her back and arms, that might be a good thing.

Ironwood laughed. "All right, I think that's enough for today. We've gotten you a hotel in Spandau proper. Get some sleep, and we'll take care of the rest. Dismissed." Everyone snapped to, then filed out of the office, Winter and Penny following, leaving Ironwood alone in the darkened room.

* * *

As Ruby and Norn Flights left the castlelike building, they found a group of five people, dressed in identical, crisp new flight suits: three men, one of whom was Clover Ebi, and two women. One of the other men—the only Faunus, by his tail—was holding forth in the middle of the group. "So anyway, I told this guy that _Evangelion_ is way better than _RahXephon,_ but he just wouldn't let it go—"

Clover caught sight of the other pilots, and Winter. "Cut the chatter," he ordered. "Pop to." All five snapped to, and executed superb salutes, directed at Winter. She returned the salute. Clover then turned his attention to Ruby. "Captain Rose. Again, I'd like to apologize for the miscommunication. We didn't intend to—"

One of the women—the largest woman Ruby had ever seen—stepped forward and grabbed both of Ruby's hands, shaking them vigorously. "I feel so bad, honestly!" she exclaimed. "We escorted you here like you were prisoners! We didn't really know who you were. Let me buy you dinner, at least."

Ruby extricated her hands, which were now aching, and stared up at the woman. She had to be at least six foot four, if not taller, and built like a professional wrestler. "Uh, yeah. Um, that's okay."

"You could've asked," Pyrrha said.

"Wasn't what we were told to do," the Faunus said. "But we're all on the same team now…not that, er, I'm happy about it, you understand…" He looked away from Weiss, who covered her mouth with her hand; his tail was wagging furiously, and the Faunus grabbed it to stop, in vain.

"I think introductions are in order," Clover said, pointing to each in turn. "This hypocrite right here is 2nd Lieutenant Marrow Amin—"

"Our Canadian nerdy FNG," the shorter woman snickered. Her accent reminded Ruby of Ruth Lionheart's, though not as thick.

"Ahem. Shorty here is Flying Officer Harriet Bree of the RAF." Harriet was no taller than Ruby, and lean, with the figure of someone who clearly did a lot of competitive running, her hair shorn close to her head, almost in a crewcut, except for two strands that dangled from the front of her scalp. She smiled at Ruby, but there was no real friendliness in it. Ruby instantly wanted to shove Harriet down an intake.

"Our big girl is Oberleutnant Elm Ederne." Elm grinned and threw them a salute. "The quiet guy here is Yubasi—Captain-Vine Zeki." Vine was tall and thin, almost to the point of emaciation, and his skin was actually paler than Weiss'. "And naturally I'm the leader of this merry band—Major Clover Ebi."

"Are all of you Americans?" Nora asked.

"Actually, no. I am, and Marrow's from Canada, so he sort of is. Harriet hails from Jolly Olde England, Elm is from right here in Germany, and Vine's Turkish." Clover smiled. "All of us trained in the US, however. Ironwood selected us a year ago to work up the F-35, and get it into combat." He spread his hands, which caused his flight suit to tighten across his chest. Yang made appreciative noises, then squeaked as Blake elbowed her again. "Despite what Marrow here says, we're looking forward to working with you. We just wanted to tell you that, which is why we came down."

"I'm looking forward to seeing what you people can do," Harriet said. Her smile became predatory.

Vine sighed. "Not everything is a competition, Harriet."

"The hell it isn't." She continued to stare at Ruby. "Heard you were hot shit at Beacon, Rose. How many kills do you have?"

Ruby found that she wasn't sure, and hesitated. Weiss didn't. "Counting today's engagement, _Captain_ Rose has 18 victories. Captain Belladonna has 15. Captain Long has 21.5, and I have 20." Yang's eyebrows rose; she had no idea she was now leading Ruby Flight in kills. "As for Norn Flight, Major Nikos has 36.5, Captain Lie has 13, 1st Lieutenant Valkyrie has 8.5, and Ensign Pine has 7." She motioned at Qrow. "I have no idea how many Major Branwen has, and I don't think any of us wants to hear how many Colonel Calavera has."

Harriet's face fell, and Marrow, Elm, and even Vine looked surprised. Clover chuckled at seeing his unit get taken down a peg. "Well, we're all aces, but we don't have that many. Then again, we haven't been engaged as much as you have." He laughed and waved them forward. "Well, let's stop the dick measuring contest, shall we? There's a great gasthaus by your hotel. Our treat."

* * *

_Schlosshotel Spandau_

_Spandau, Berlin, Federal Republic of Germany_

_3 August 2001_

Their quarters in the hotel weren't quite as good as they had been in Algeria: each flight got their own room, four to each, with Qrow getting his own. Pyrrha had quietly convinced the hotel manager to give Ren and Nora their own room, while she remained with Oscar. Yang would occasionally give Ruby a look that promised she would be tied to her bed if Ruby tried to sneak out, but Ruby was too exhausted in any case, even though she had the feeling she could probably talk Pyrrha into getting her own room as well, leaving Oscar all alone.

None of Ruby Flight had lasted long after a heroic dinner at the nearby gasthaus; they had started the day in Algiers, after all. Ruby was sleeping soundly, face down in her pillows, when the distant noise of someone knocking penetrated her brain. She lifted her face from the pillow slowly, and stared at the door, then looked at the other beds. She almost laughed: the other girls were in exactly the same sleeping positions they had been at Beacon. Yang was sprawled across her bed, softly snoring, her T-shirt dangerously close to exposing her assets; Blake was curled up in hers like a kitten, appropriately enough; Weiss had the covers pulled up to her chin, and was sleeping at attention. Ruby yawned, heard the knocking intensify, and rasped, "Hold on a minute!" She slowly managed to get out of the rather comfortable bed, dragged herself across the room, and opened the door.

"Salutations," Penny Polendina said.

"Oh…hey." Ruby rubbed her eyes. "Um, hi."

"Hello, Captain Rose. I thought perhaps you might like to meet my father today. You undoubtedly have many questions as to why I am alive. Also, his office is near the Tiergarten; I thought you might enjoy seeing some of Berlin's sights."

"Um…" Ruby shook herself awake, more or less. "Sure. Yeah, that sounds great. Come on in. I'll get everyone else up."

"Certainly," Penny replied as she walked in. "I will put on the coffee."

"Thanks." Ruby stumbled over to Yang's bed, absently scratching her rear. She kicked Yang's bed. Her snoring only intensified. "Yang. Wake up." She raised her voice. "Yang, dammit! Get _up!"_

The snoring stopped, and her sister's real hand came out of the covers, extending a middle finger. "Fuck off."

"Such language!" Penny said in shock.

The sound of Penny's voice finally got Yang to open her eyes. "What the hell is going on?"

"Penny's taking us around Berlin."

Weiss rose out of her bed like a summoned zombie. "That sounds interesting. It's been awhile since I've been to Berlin." She got out of bed and walked towards the shower, wearing her nightdress. "I need to shower."

Blake was awake as well, and she stretched and yawned, her mouth falling open and tongue extending, just like a cat. "I call second."

"Well, shit." Yang threw off the covers and stretched as well. "What time is it?"

"It is 1000 hours," Penny supplied.

"Man, I slept good." Yang popped her neck. "How're you, Rubes? Groin still giving you trouble?"

"No, it's better today," Ruby said without thinking.

"Healed pretty fast for a pulled muscle, especially with all the Gs you pulled yesterday. Welp, none of my business." She slapped her sister's butt and walked towards the coffee, leaving Ruby's face bright red.

* * *

Qrow Branwen actually slept much like Yang, though he wasn't snoring. The phone rang, startling him out of a sound sleep. He mumbled horrible curse words and reached over for the phone. "What?" Then he realized he had it backwards and turned it around. "What?"

"Uncle Qrow!" Ruby half-yelled. "Hey, we're going into town today to meet, er, Penny's dad. Doctor Polendina. Yang, me, Blake, Weiss and Pyrrha. Oscar didn't feel like going, and Ren and Nora…well, they've got their own plans."

"I'll bet," Qrow snickered. "Nah, you go on ahead, kiddo. I feel like being a lazy ass today."

"Okay." Ruby sounded disappointed. "Well, see you later." The line clicked off, and Qrow hung up.

"Your niece?" Winter mumbled, from where her head rested on his chest.

"Yep. They're headed into Berlin. Going to go meet Penny's dad or something."

"Ah, Doctor Polendina. Yes, he'll be able to explain everything about Penny." Winter snuggled closer to him, moving her leg up his. "Staying here, then?"

"Uh-huh."

Winter ran her hand over his hairy chest, then moved it downwards. "Good."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The EC-130E Commando Solo exists-though today's it's the EC-130J Commando Solo III, and I'm not sure if it can actually break into radio/TV broadcasts and override them. Everything else is accurate in Ruby's description. Harriet referring to Marrow as a FNG is, of course, a nice way of saying "Fucking New Guy." Just as a reminder (since it's been awhile), Operation Reforger was (and may still be) an emergency deployment of several divisions of the US Army from the continental United States (CONUS) to Europe, using preplaced equipment. The idea was to move divisions quickly to Europe in case of an imminent attack by the Soviet Union, which never materialized, though practice Reforgers were held every year during the late Cold War.
> 
> IRL, Rudolf Hess died of natural causes in 1987, the last inmate at Spandau Prison-and by then, the only one. While the other war criminals who were not hanged had their sentences commuted for the most part, Hess remained in prison at the demand of the Soviet Union; Hess had been Hitler's right-hand man for a time, and the Soviets bore an understandable grudge. I was surprised to find out that the prison has since been torn down, and a mall is there today. In this world, the Germans themselves decided to do away with Hess after the Third World War, and Spandau remains. Why would Ironwood use it as a headquarters? Foreshadowing, maybe...


	21. Forgiveness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Why is Penny back from the dead? Ruby Flight is about to find out, when they meet Pietro Polendina. 
> 
> But this isn't the same Penny...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another bridge chapter tonight, but we'll get to some combat next chapter. This one is about Penny, along with some other plot points.
> 
> And apologies about the error in the last chapter, where I accidentally implied that Qrow is sleeping with Weiss *and* Winter. Qrow's good, but he's not that good. It was pretty late when I finished that chapter...

_Ernst Reuter Platz_

_Charlottenburg, Berlin, Federal Republic_

_3 August 2001_

It wasn't a long trip from Spandau to Charlottenburg, a suburb of Berlin, between the Spree River and the Tiergarten, the huge park that bordered downtown Berlin to the west. Ruby Flight, plus Penny and Pyrrha, rode the famous Berlin subway, the U-Bahn, to the Ernst Reuter Platz station. As they left the station and walked up to the surface, Ruby and Yang started giggling. Penny looked at them in concern. "What's so funny?"

Ruby pointed to the exit sign hanging over a nearby parking garage. It read _Ausfahrt._ It started her giggling again, joined by her sister. Penny smiled, though she was clearly confused, while Weiss rolled her eyes. "Sometimes I think they're ten years old," she remarked to Blake. She stopped at a newsstand on the street and picked up a newspaper, both because she was curious as to the local news, and to put some distance between her and the sisters.

Pyrrha walked over to the newsstand as well, mainly to stay away from Penny. The girl kept smiling at her, with an expression like she wanted to say something, but couldn't bring herself to do it. Pyrrha couldn't blame her: how do you talk to someone who had killed you? "Anything interesting?"

"Mm. 'Missing Journalist Found Slain,'" Weiss read. "A Berlin journalist who was critical of Ironwood was found dead in Grunwald. That's a suburb just southwest of here."

"I know. I've been to Berlin several times. My German is only so-so, I'm afraid." Pyrrha blew out her breath. "That's not good if journalists who don't like Ironwood are turning up dead."

"It could be coincidence. The poor man was literally cut to pieces. Doesn't sound like a political hit." Weiss ran down the paper. "'Election Imminent: Polish Hometown Hero vs. German Tycoon.' This Robyn Hill character vs. my father." Weiss' fingers tightened around the paper. "Hope she destroys him. Oh, this is interesting…'Pressure and Criticism Continues to Mount on EU Council Over Embargo.' It looks like there's growing pressure for the EU to end the embargo against the United States."

"It's hurting the EU worse than it's hurting the Americans," Pyrrha said, remembering their conversation with Ironwood and Colonel Kraft at Aviano. "Is that a poll on the election?"

"Yes. It looks like my father is leading, but it's very close." Weiss chuckled. "And with all his support, he's _still_ only barely leading."

Pyrrha looked over her shoulder. "We'd better get going before Yang and Ruby set back German-American relations back another fifty years." The two sisters were goggling at everything, talking loudly about how awesome everything was, and doing everything but putting signs around their necks reading AMERICAN TOURIST. Blake was trying to rein them in without much luck, while Penny just looked perplexed. "Oh God," Pyrrha murmured at Ruby and Yang. "Just don't mention the war."

Weiss began to move away, putting the paper back, but the newsstand owner cleared his throat. Weiss nodded, reached into her pants pocket, and pulled out the right amount of euros, what she had left over from her slightly drunken escapade with Pyrrha and the Cotta-Arcs in Algiers. He smiled politely and Weiss joined her friends at the side of the street.

"Weiss, what's this street called? I can't remember. Isn't it the main drag of Berlin?" Ruby asked her.

"Here it's Bismarck Strasse," Weiss said. "You're thinking of the Unter den Linden—that's a bit further east."

"Yeah, that's it." Ruby looked around in marvel. "Wow. And to think this place got the shit knocked out of it by us in World War II!" Pyrrha covered her eyes.

As they waited for the light to change, a good number of military vehicles passed—wheeled armored personnel carriers and trucks, each with armed troops. "Is this normal?" Blake asked Weiss. "This many soldiers?"

"No," Weiss replied. "I've never seen this many troops outside the kasernes, except during exercises."

Penny led them across the wide boulevard, then down a few other streets into a commercial area, sandiwched between the Spree and the Landwehr Canal. They came to a large building with green trim, and a sign that read _Technisches Institut Polendina_. As Penny reached for the door, it opened and a Faunus nearly collided with her. "Excuse me," she said in German, and walked past the group, flexing her arm. Yang noticed it was similar to hers, but more primitive, without the same range of motion she had.

They went inside, but to their surprise, the office was not particularly large, divided into a front office and waiting room, and what looked to be a small exam room in the back. A dark-skinned, gray-haired man was sitting behind the desk, humming to himself, and checking papers. Even though a bell rang as the pilots walked in, he didn't look up. It was only when Penny said "Hi, Dad!" that he did.

"Penny!" The man's face split into a wide smile and he held out his arms. She went behind the desk and hugged him, then stood aside as he came out. They were a bit surprised to see he was in a wheelchair. "Hello, hello! You must be Ruby Flight—and Pyrrha Nikos. My daughter has told me so much about all of you! I'm Pietro Polendina." He put out a hand to each in turn.

"You're Penny's…dad?" Ruby asked hesitantly.

"Sure am." He waved them to the back. "I imagine you have a lot of questions." He nodded to Pyrrha. "Especially you."

Pyrrha's fingers twisted around themselves in nervousness. "I'm sorry," she said quietly. "I…" Her eyes filled with tears and she looked up at Penny. "I killed you."

Penny rushed forward and hugged her. "It wasn't your fault, Major Nikos! You had no choice. If you hadn't, my predecessor would've been helpless to stop the Paladin B-1 from attacking all those airliners around Chicago. You did the right thing." She withdrew and gave Pyrrha a heartbreaking smile.

"I…I don't understand," Pyrrha stammered. "Your predecessor?"

Pietro coughed, first politely, then more. "Maybe I'd better start at the beginning." Penny withdrew from Pyrrha and stood to one side, hands behind her back. They had only ever seen her in a flight suit or a borrowed USAF formal uniform; today, she was dressed more or less traditionally German, with lederhosen-like straps over a frilly blouse, and a wide fluffy dress and stockings. "About twenty years ago, there was a fear that the GRIMM would become more technologically advanced, and aerospace engineering was beginning to outpace the human body's ability to handle it—all of you probably remember the initially high loss rate of the F-16, as pilots passed out and crashed because they couldn't handle nine Gs. The airframe could take it, but not the pilot. We thought about augmenting human pilots, but there was the ethical issue of 'modifying' human beings. A lot of potential for abuse there. So, I and a few colleagues began embarking on first cybernetic, then cloning technology. The United States was not very keen on the idea, so we moved our research here." He grinned. "I bet you were thinking I was an Italian guy, not someone from Austin, Texas."

"Cloning?" Ruby asked. "Like in _Blade Runner?"_

"Very similar," Pietro answered. "Clones are 'grown,' I guess is the best word, from living tissue, in tanks—vats, for lack of a better term. Sperm and ova are combined as what would happen in a woman's womb, but instead of taking nine months, the fetus is brought to full term in about nine weeks. Growth is accelerated so that a clone reaches full maturity in five to six months."

"My God," Blake breathed. "Like Nicholas Schnee and the Faunus."

"Well…" Pietro waved his hand back and forth. "Sort of. Nicholas Schnee used the fact that animals mature much faster than humans-three or four years, in some cases. We did build on his research, however."

Yang slowly turned to look at Blake. "Um, Blake?"

Pietro laughed before Blake could answer. "Only the first generation of Faunus were created in such a fashion—Miss Belladonna's parents, for instance. However, subsequent generations were born and matured identically to humans."

"Yes, Yang, I'm really 24 years old," Blake added.

"It took us ten years to successfully clone a sheep. Then we moved on to a human." He motioned at Penny. "Penny here has been genetically manipulated to be slightly stronger and faster than the human norm, though not as strong or as fast as some Faunus species. Her bones are reinforced with carbon fibre and her muscles enhanced in places with polymers. She can better survive Gs—"

"Up to 14 Gs!" Penny interrupted happily.

"—and her lungs are larger than the average to increase her oxygen intake. Finally, her eyes are very acute—though not as much as yours, Miss Rose."

Ruby nodded. "Penny…well, I guess the first Penny…she told me most of that."

"She told me. She said you were a true friend, and could be trusted." Pietro smiled. "For her to trust you like that, I imagine you were."

"I only knew her a few weeks," Ruby replied, wiping her eyes, "but I liked her a lot."

"She felt the same way—about all of you," Pietro told them. He shrugged. "Penny was designed to be part of an integrated weapons system, a literal new breed of human being that could fly high-performance aircraft. Initially, when the project was in its infancy, she was to fly the Night Raven, but when that project failed after the theft of the prototype—" Yang kept her mouth shut on that one "—it was switched to the simpler Paladin Project with a modified B-1." Pietro held up a hand. "But Penny is _not_ just a weapons system. She is a human being—an enhanced one, yes, but still as human as you or I. I want to make that abundantly clear, since it seems that certain people refuse to acknowledge that." His voice became bitter, but he caught himself. "Present company excluded."

"So…what happened with the last Penny? I mean, I know she...she died, but how did you..." Ruby's voice trailed off.

"Yes, she died," Pietro said, softly. "We all saw it. And no, Miss Nikos, I do not in _any_ way hold you responsible for that. In fact, if Penny was to die in such a fashion…I'm glad it was by the hand of a friend."

"Thank you," Pyrrha said, with a shuddering breath. Blake put an arm around her shoulders.

"After Penny I died, I began working on Penny II here." He touched her hand as she beamed down at him. "NATO ordered me to, but I would've done it anyway. She's the Penny you knew in every way but her memory. There's no way to transfer that, unfortunately."

"Which was why Penny said 'there are others,'" Pyrrha said, her voice breaking.

"Doctor Polendina, I have to ask…is there an ethical issue to all this? Creating life?" Blake wanted to know.

"I'm not sure I'd go as far as that, Miss Belladonna. Penny was conceived in the same way a human or Faunus is—without the actual sexual act, of course. The sperm and ova were donated anonymously." He looked down. "As for me, my wife and I…we could never have children of our own. This was the best we could do, I'm afraid, and my wife, well…she sadly never lived long enough to see Penny."

"What happened?" Yang had never been much for tact.

"A lab explosion," Pietro explained. He motioned to the wheelchair. "It's why I'm in this. My back was broken. My wife and two others were killed." He looked like he wanted to say more, but then he shook his head free of the memories and continued on.

"Are there…more Pennys?" Blake asked slowly. "If you can tell us."

"I can, and no, there isn't," Pietro said firmly. "Could we make more? Could we mass produce Pennys, and have a bunch of them floating in a vat somewhere, ready to plug and play?" His voice rose in anger. "Yes, we could do that, and there are those who think that would be best. Clone hundreds, thousands of Pennys and throw them against the GRIMM. There are even those who believe that we shouldn't even bother giving them sentience, and literally build them into the weapon system itself." He slammed a fist on the arm of his wheelchair. "Not in my lifetime! I want to have living, thinking human beings, with all the faults and foibles of humanity, and all of our strengths!"

"Dad, calm down!" Penny exclaimed, putting a hand on his shoulder. Pietro took a breath and nodded, then began coughing. Ruby understood: Pietro had wanted a daughter, and found a way to create one; when that one was cruelly murdered by Salem's minions, he could not live without creating another. She wondered that, if Penny II died, if he could resist making a third. It would be tempting beyond reason. Ruby wasn't sure that, if she was in such a position, if _she_ could resist. She caught the expression on Blake's face, though the Faunus was doing a good job in disguising it. It was one of revulsion. "I think you've answered all our questions," Ruby said before anyone noticed Blake.

Pietro recovered from his coughing fit. "I'm sorry about that." He sat up in the wheelchair. "Naturally, all of that is top secret. We will go public at some point. Though I won't create clones to serve as organ farms either, we are making significant strides in cloning limbs that can be reattached to people—the problem is immune systems rejecting it, and…" He laughed. "Well, I shouldn't get carried away. Now let me look at that arm, Miss Xiao Long."

Yang knelt in front of him so he could look it over. He tapped it, rotated it, and nodded. "My God, they did a fine job. I see you painted it a little." There were yellow highlights on the arm; Yang had added them before they left Japan, with a little help from Weiss' rehab doctors at Yokosuka.

"Thought it was kind of boring, just gray and black,"

"Oh, I'm not criticizing," Pietro assured her. "In fact, that gives me an idea to offer that as an option to my patients!" He tested the fingers. "No trouble?"

"Not anymore. I've been flying with it for over two months now."

"That's wonderful news," Pietro said. "At General Ironwood's insistence, you got the very best, Miss Xiao Long. That arm is experimental—one of a kind…for now. Right now, until we can solve the immune system issues, we are forced to use cybernetics. Unfortunately, we are slightly further along on that front. With the state of near perpetual war we've been in, we've had plenty of opportunity to experiment, and plenty of test subjects." He patted the arm and let her stand. "I hope you don't mind being used as something of a guinea pig. Trust me, as soon as we can use cloned limbs, we'll replace that."

Yang flexed the artificial arm. "I don't know. I'm kind of attached to it." Ruby, Weiss and Blake groaned at the pun, but Pyrrha, Penny and Pietro laughed. "No, really. I've gotten used to it. Now if you could put a gun in the palm, or something…" To her surprise, Pietro's eyes narrowed, he gazed at her arm, and Yang realized he was seriously considering it.

"Speaking of General Ironwood," Weiss said, "what's with all the troops on the streets?"

Pietro coughed again, though not as violently as the last time. "Well…when Beacon fell, it hit all of us here pretty hard. Ironwood was close to Captain Ozpin, and naturally I had lost Penny. And for a few days, Miss Schnee, I can tell you that your sister was very worried about you. Don't tell her I told you that." He smiled conspiratorially. "James saw it all happen, and could do nothing. He was a spectator; you pilots were up there fighting the GRIMM. I understand he did help fight the White Fang, but he could only stand by and watch as his best friend died. It changed him. He's…"

"He's scared," Pyrrha finished.

"Yes…and no. Scared that it will happen again, and determined that it won't, no matter what. And he's a little paranoid, though he has a reason to be. It's not the GRIMM or the White Fang; those were known threats. Someone completely infiltrated our computer systems, turned them against us, and allowed the Wyvern to get as far as it did. Not just the Mississippi Barrier, but also Project Paladin. It made us look like idiots, even traitors. The EU's embargo is not just because they're angry at the existence of the orbital weapons platform—it's also out of fear, because no matter how much Ironwood reassures them that the Black Queen virus has been purged from defense systems, there's always that little voice saying that maybe we didn't get it all. And maybe we didn't." Pietro stared up at the ceiling as an airliner rumbled overhead, on approach to Tegel. "Whoever managed to do that is either a genius, or one of our own…or both. That's what I think, and so does James."

He sighed. "Again, keep this to yourselves, but you should know. The general is under enormous pressure, from all sides. He feels alone and isolated. Your sister, Miss Schnee, has been doing her best to help, but Ironwood refuses to delegate many tasks. He needs rest, but he refuses to take it. Honestly, he should be relieved and sent home, not because of anything he's done, but because he's exhausted—but I would imagine the President and the Pentagon wouldn't do it, because it's seen as giving into EU pressure, and reflects badly on them. I tell you this, because maybe you can help." Pietro smiled. "I talked to him on the phone this morning, and he already sounds better. You're all so young, of course, but I think he sees you as friends he can rely on and trust. And right now, he needs that more than ever."

There was silence for a few minutes, then Penny spoke up. "I have read all of Penny I's letters and emails. I've tried to get to know her, and I have, like a sister I never met." She stepped forward and gently took Ruby's hands in her own. "You were Penny I's friend. I think that means you are _my_ friend too, if that's okay with you."

Ruby grabbed Penny and hugged her. "You bet I am!"

Penny then hugged all of them, and hugged Pyrrha last, harder than the others, as if she could someone transmit her forgiveness and compassion by osmosis. Pyrrha was trying not to cry more, and not succeeding very well, but she was hardly alone in that.

* * *

After talking with Pietro awhile longer, the group left and decided to do some sightseeing; they needed to relax as well. They explored the Tiergarten and the famous Berlin Zoo, saw the unrestored ruins of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, visited the Brandenburg Gate, the Holocaust Memorial, and the Reichstag Building. The capitol had been symbolically moved back to Berlin from Bonn in 1972, once the GRIMM threat from the east had ebbed enough. They concluded their sightseeing by dinner at a rather expensive restaurant as night fell on the city.

"Ooh, boy," Yang groaned happily as they left. She patted her stomach. "Man, that was good. Weiss, your ancestors crawled out of the primordial ooze for two reaons: to build Porsches and cook jagerschnitzel."

"I'll take that," Weiss laughed. The food had reminded her of home, but having friends around turned the memories into happy ones. "Do you want to get a cab or take the U-Bahn?"

"Heck no! Let's hit a bar!"

"Ohh, no," Pyrrha grinned, waving her hands. "No, no. Let's not end the night on _that_ note. Weiss, Saphron, and Terra and I got a little tipsy the other night in Algiers. I don't want to make that a habit."

"A _little_ tipsy?" Weiss snickered. "You and I were pretty merry, Pyrrha. And we practically carried Saphron back home. Thank goodness Terra was the designated driver."

"Oh, all right," Yang gave in. "We'll just have one beer, okay?" She looked sidelong at Ruby. "Besides, I guess we shouldn't get Lightweight here all drunky. She's liable to head back to the hotel and tell Oscar to take her to bed or lose her forever."

"What?" Ruby stared daggers at her sister. "Dammit, Yang! I'm gonna throw you in the river! I told you, _nothing happened!"_

"What happened?" Penny asked, as guileless as a newborn lamb. "Or didn't happen?"

That explanation, or protests to the contrary, took them to the nearest beer garden. As promised, all of them had a single beer, though it was a rather tall stein of the superb German variety; even Penny had one, though she only finished half of it, unsure of how her metabolism would handle it. Ruby was glad to see Pyrrha looking more relaxed: Penny forgiving her had helped relieve the Greek girl of at least some of her emotional burdens.

Blake was tipping back her stein when she noticed a small group of Faunus sitting in the corner, drinking quietly. She looked around, and noticed there were no other Faunus in the garden besides them and herself. She had caught a few glances here and there when she'd walked in, though there had been a fair number of Faunus in Berlin, about the same she had seen in Tokyo, but the Faunus here had been keeping to themselves, and not in the mixed company of humans. "Weiss?" Blake had to raise her voice to be heard. "What's going on with the Faunus here?"

"We don't like Faunus," said a new voice, in accented English. Blake turned in her chair, to see a goateed young man staring at her. "Your kind don't belong in here. You should go back to Menagerie where you belong."

 _Wonderful,_ Blake thought. The man was obviously drunk, and he'd said it loud enough so that the entire beer garden had heard him. Conversation noticeably dipped, and out of the corner of one eye, she saw the small group of Faunus motion for the waiter. She also saw Yang set down her stein, a dangerous look in her eyes. If she didn't do something, there was going to be a fight; the drunk had friends. "Sorry," Blake apologized. "I didn't mean to imply—"

The man got up, weaved a little, and stared down at her. He wasn't particularly big, and Blake knew she could easily take him if it came to blows, but she didn't want to start anything. "What?" the drunk demanded. " _What_ didn't you mean to imply, you furry?" Blake's ears flattened; _furry_ was a derogatory term used for Faunus, though she hadn't heard it since boot camp. "Fucking furry Americans."

Yang was on her feet. So was Ruby. "Shut up," Yang snarled.

Blake motioned them back to their seats. "Easy. We can't cause a scene."

One of the drunk man's friends—who wasn't feeling much pain himself—got up and put a hand on his friend's shoulder. "Don't pay no attention to him," the friend said, in better English. "It's the embargo. He lost his job. He's in a rough patch—a lot of us are. It'll blow over…you'll see."

The drunk shrugged his friend off. "Fucking Americans," he repeated. "Bringing all your tanks and soldiers over here where you're not wanted! And Faunus are just stupid animals!" Conversation had ceased, and the patrons looked very uncomfortable. "Get the hell out." He added a spate of German, which Blake didn't understand, but given the expressions of the other people, was not very friendly.

Blake put her hands up. "My friends and I are just leaving, okay?"

The drunk seemed to accept that, and took a step back, but then he spit on Blake's shoes. "Stupid fucking furry Faunus—"

Weiss came out of her seat in a blur and punched the drunk in the face. Taken completely by surprise, he went down, nearly bringing his friend down with him. Weiss stood over him, blood dripping from her knuckles; more poured from the man's nose. "Stay down," she growled in German. "Apologize to my friend, or I will beat you into a coma." The drunk shook his head and looked up at her. " _Now!"_ Weiss shouted.

"I…I'm sorry," the drunk said to Weiss.

"Not to me, you dolt! To _her!"_ Weiss pointed at Blake. She put her foot next to his ribs.

"I'm sorry!" he told Blake. His friend, taking one look at the people at the table, decided discretion was the better part of valor. He tossed a handful of euros onto the table, motioned the others sitting there, and they dragged their friend out. There was scattered applause, and Weiss sat down, pouring beer over her knuckles and drying them with a napkin.

"Check six," Ruby warned. The manager was coming over to them. The pilots scooted their chairs back, sure that they were about to be told to leave, but instead the manager took their bill and stuffed it into a pocket. "This is on the house," he said. "Please…we're not all like that."

"I know," Blake smiled at him. "It's all right."

"No, it's not." The manager gave her a brittle smile, a half-bow, and left.

"Weiss," Ruby said, impressed. "Damn."

"Worth it," Weiss said, massaging her bruised knuckles. Blake put her arm around her; they'd come a long way since Beacon.

* * *

After that, they rode the subway back to Spandau and went back to their rooms—except for Pyrrha. She went down to the hotel gym, changed into her workout clothes, and went to work on the punching bag. Since she wasn't enraged or upset, her punches and kicks did not have more than the usual force. In fact, she had to think about the incident at the beer garden to get properly worked up at all. Once she'd done enough for her first set, she sat down on a weight machine and drank some water. Pyrrha caught sight of herself in the mirror. _My goodness. I'm getting quite the abdominals!_ She ran her fingers over her stomach. Pyrrha had always had a good figure, but now it was becoming a muscular one.

"Hey there. Need a spotter?" Pyrrha looked around, and saw Clover Ebi standing in the doorway to the small gym. He was dressed casually, and she felt her mouth go a little dry at the sight. Clover belonged on recruiting posters.

"No, thank you," she said. "What are you doing here?"

"Looking for you." Pyrrha's eyebrows rose, and Clover laughed. "Not like that. Orders." He got closer, and lowered his voice. "We were going to wait on this until after your aircraft had gotten those upgrades the general was talking about, but we've been tasked to clear a target in Poland tomorrow. Can't say here, but let your people know to get some sleep tonight. We'll pick you guys up around 0900. It's not going to be a milk run, either."

"GRIMM," Pyrrha commented.

"Yeah. Good number of them, air and ground. May have to do some mud-moving."

"Well, Nora will like that," Pyrrha smiled. "All right, Major. Thank you. I'll let them know immediately." She got to her feet, which left her uncomfortably close to Clover. _God, he's good looking._ She mentally shook herself to stop thinking like that.

He stepped back. "Sorry," he said quietly.

"I imagine I don't smell very nice," Pyrrha replied. Her smile became a nervous one. "I'll go…let my group know."

"Sure." Pyrrha went past him and bent over to pick up her gym bag, and knew Clover was looking at her toned rear end. She found she wasn't upset about that; he was only human, and so was she. After all, she had certainly admired his form. _You can't,_ she told herself. _Don't even think that._

 _Why not?_ Jaune's voice echoed in her mind, so much that she actually straightened up, half-expecting to see him standing in front of her. _Mon Dieu, Pyrrha. You can't be alone forever. I don't want that. It's okay. Live your life._

"Live my life," Pyrrha whispered to herself, so low Clover couldn't hear. He was leaving the gym, a bit sheepishly, she thought; he probably figured she was about to let him have it for staring at her butt. "Hey," she raised her voice. He stopped and turned, guilt on his face. Pyrrha smiled, more comfortably this time. "After I tell everyone…would you like to have a coffee or something? Nothing too fancy; the hotel here has a nice little nook. And some rather nice Black Forest cake."

Now it was Clover's eyebrows that rose. "Uh, are you sure?" He nodded at the punching bag. "I mean, I've got a sweet tooth. Too much that, and I'm going to be in here to work out too." Pyrrha was very certain that Clover worked out quite a bit anyway; he had a physique that even Sun Wukong or Cardin Winchester would be envious of.

"If you're too busy, I understand," Pyrrha said.

Clover grinned. "Hell no, I'm not too busy."

"Give me about twenty minutes or so."

"Absolutely." He threw her a salute and walked out of the gym.

Pyrrha craned her head upwards and admired his rear end, in the slacks. "Live my life," she repeated, shook her head, and laughed to herself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Don't mention the war!" If you're a John Cleese fan, you know where that reference came from.
> 
> Pietro's reference to the high initial loss rate of the F-16 is accurate. Until pilots got used to it, and how responsive the F-16 is, it was a handful to fly-to the point that the USAF was worried that the Viper might be too hot to handle.
> 
> I thought seriously about eliminating the scene between the drunk and Blake, although it's in canon RWBY; the last thing I want to imply is that the German people have something against Faunus, as there is a huge amount of historical baggage there. I kept it because it's one of the moments I liked in Season 7: it shows just how far Weiss has come from distrusting and disliking Faunus, to being the first to defend Blake, even faster than Yang did. It was also to illustrate that Ironwood isn't exactly well liked...


	22. Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ruby, Norn and Ace Flights go back into action against a Geist and a new GRIMM threat. The question is, what are the GRIMM protecting?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another longish chapter, but I wanted to throw in some fun character moments. This story arc is going to get pretty dark, so let's enjoy the fun while we can...

_Berlin-Tegel International Airport_

_Berlin, Federal Republic of Germany_

_4 August 2001_

"Good morning, ladies and gentlemen," Clover Ebi said, standing in front of the gathered fighter pilots of Ace, Ruby and Norn Flights, drawn up in one of the airport's huge maintenance hangars. "Looks like we'll be flying together a lot sooner than we thought."

He pulled back the cover on an easel, showing a map of the operations area. "Our intention was to give Ruby and Norn Flights some time off from their long trip from, you know, around the planet. Unfortunately, a Geist was sighted early last night near Czestochowa—visually. As you know, the Geist is very stealthy, to the point that it doesn't show up on AWACS or our radars, even synthetic-aperature ones. It shot down three Army helicopters out of the 1st Armored. Polish fighters were scrambled out of Wroclaw, but they were only able to track it visually back to the Belchatow area. We don't know if the Geist was supposed to be part of that big GRIMM gaggle Ruby and Norn took out yesterday, and was just late to the party, or this was a completely separate attack. Either way, Belchatow is vital to the war effort, so we can't afford to have the Geist operating in the area." Clover's hands moved across the map. "Advanced scouts from the 5th Infantry were in the area last night as well, and they reported Centinels in the area."

Ruby raised her hand. "Centinels?"

Clover nodded. "You folks over in the Remnant probably haven't run into them yet. They're still new around here, too. Centinels are basically hovertanks—they're hovercraft, with a 100mm tank cannon and machine guns. They're fast as hell, but luckily they rely on speed more than armor. It looks like a certain someone we're not mentioning out loud has been reconditioning old T-55 turrets on a new hull. The 5th has asked that we take care of those along with the Geist." He smiled. "Which means today we get to move some mud."

That set up a chorus of groans from most of the pilots, though one happy cheer from Nora. Fighter pilots had a saying: _not a pound for air to ground._ In theory, all of the aircraft from all three flights could carry bombs, but except for Nora, the pilots weren't exactly fond of the idea. Clover raised his hands to quiet them down. "All right, none of us like going against ground GRIMM—"

"A- _hem,_ " Nora cleared her throat loudly.

"Okay, almost none of us. Fact is, the Army could use the help. Besides, our strikers will draw out the Geist and any other air GRIMM that might be around." Clover pointed to a gray scar on the green landscape. "We believe that the Geist and the Centinels are around this coal mine, here. The Belchanow coal mine is the largest in Europe, and our Polish friends would love to get it back in operation, so we'll be helping them out too." Out of the corner of one eye, Yang noticed Blake give a start at the mention of the coal mine. "The mission is pretty straightforward, then. We engage the Centinels, take out as many as we can, draw out the Geist and whatever else is there, and shoot them down. Kill 'em all. Major Branwen?"

Clover stepped to one side as Qrow walked forward. "Flight assignments. Clover and I are Alpha Flight; we'll be taking off first, get out east of the mine, and come in from that direction, noses cold. Maybe we can take the Geist by surprise." He nodded at Ruby. "Ruby Flight will come in from the south; Harriet and Marrow will fly with them. Elm and Vine will join Norn Flight."

"You're splitting us up?" Harriet asked.

Clover jumped in. "We know the ground, so better to split us up for now. Flight commands will still be Ruby and Pyrrha—they have seniority. That a problem?"

Harriet glanced sidelong at Ruby. "No, sir." Marrow said nothing, but his tail started wagging.

Elm smiled at Pyrrha. "Not at all." Vine only gave Pyrrha a small nod.

"Good to hear," Qrow said. "We'll have AWACS support from Haisla, plus Green Anchor here—" he pointed to a racetrack pattern near Poznan "—for tanker support. We'll also have a ground FAC, callsign Snowbird. That's Forward Air Control for those of you who weren't paying attention in flight school. Snowbird is some poor bastard in a tank. They'll designate any targets as necessary and clear us in and out of the AO. Nobody drops a thing unless the FAC clears it. Anyone who does and gets some Army puke killed will be headed back home with their ass in a sling. Hear me?" There were nods all around. "Okay. If you get hit, the closest airbases are at Wroclaw and Poznan; safe bailout zones are northwest and southwest at Kalisz and Czestochowa. We'll stay above 10,000 feet until we reach the AO; those Army guys think anything with wings is GRIMM. Weather looks okay—a lot of clouds, but no rain expected; otherwise it should be a nice summer day. Clover?"

"Now here's how we're sitting on weapons loads," Clover told them, taking over the briefing again. "Ruby Flight: Ruby, Marrow, and Harriet will be loaded up with two Sidewinders, two AMRAAMs, and four Mavericks. No drop tanks today; it's only 180 miles to the target area. Your Mavs are either heat guided or beam riders for the FAC. Blake, Yang, Weiss, you're going straight air to air: four Sidewinders and four AMRAAMs—Weiss, your Typhoon is already configured for Meteors, so you'll be carrying four of them and four IRIS." Weiss nodded, but all of them could see her fighting a smile: she hadn't had a chance to use the Meteor in combat yet. "You probably won't get enough of a return on the Geist to take it out with radar-guided missiles, but you might get enough of a heat signature to take it out with heats. Best method would be to use the gun—Aces, let's be careful, because our '35s only have 180 rounds to play with." Ruby and Pyrrha shared a glance: they both wondered if Clover knew that Reaper Flight had not only been the first to engage a Geist, they'd given it its reporting name.

"I take it we're going John Wayne today," Harriet groused.

"Yep. For our non-F-35 flyers here," Clover explained with a grin, "John Wayne means we hang stuff under the wings instead of going full internal. Hurts our stealth, but that's not a big deal right now."

"The hell it isn't!" Marrow protested.

Clover continued. "Norn Flight: Vine, Pyrrha and Ren will be air-to-air with four Sidewinders and four AMRAAMs. Oscar will be loaded same as Ruby. Elm, Nora, since you're our ground attack specialists, you'll be carrying a little something different: Elm, you'll just have two Sidewinders, plus two Mavericks and a Pave Claw for strafing. Nora, you'll have two Sidewinders, _six_ Mavericks, and four rocket pods."

Nora gasped. "Is it my birthday?"

"Qrow and I will be running air to air. Our main objective is the Geist, but let's put the hurt on those Centinels, too." Clover gave them a nod. "Once we've got the place cleared, one of the flight leads will radio the success code, Tiger. After that, depending on any battle damage or fuel, we'll land at Belchanow. The 1st Armored said the airfield there is suitable for all of us. Why they're having us land there instead of head back here I haven't been told, but that comes straight down from General Ironwood. I trust that man with my life, and I'll be trusting all of you, too. Any questions?" There weren't any, so Clover clapped his hands together, echoing through the hangar. "Right. Let's make it happen, people."

* * *

Ruby made a brief check of the map, memorizing some terrain features, then walked out onto the flightline. She was already ready to go, in full G-suit and survival vest, her helmet in her right hand. She caught up with Pyrrha, who was striding towards her F-22. "Here we go again, huh?"

"Looks that way. Despite my reputation, I'm looking forward to some time off after this hop." Some fighter pilots had a superstition about talking about coming back from a mission, believing it jinxed them; Pyrrha was not one of them.

"Does that have anything to do with a certain hunky Ace Lead?" Ruby winked at her. "I saw you two in the coffee shop last night at the hotel."

Pyrrha laughed, though she blushed a little. "We just had coffee, Ruby."

"Is that a euphemism?" Yang had caught up with them as well. Neither Ruby nor Pyrrha wore sunglasses for the short walk to their aircraft, but Yang wasn't going to be caught without them; one had to look the part, after all. "Were you rolling in Clover last night, Pyr?"

Pyrrha rolled her eyes at the lame pun. "Wouldn't that be the other way around?"

Yang put a hand over her chest. "Holy shit!" She grabbed Ruby. "Rubes! Did you hear that?" She raised her voice. "Hey, everybody! Pyrrha made a joke! Write it on your calendars!" She nudged Pyrrha. "Details? I might not come back from this mission, and I don't want to die without knowing if he's got a big dick."

Pyrrha gave her a playful shove. "Yang, for goodness sake. It was just coffee."

"Uh-huh. Like my sister having 'coffee' with Oscar the other day." Yang leered at Ruby, who gave her the finger. "I know I'm number one, Ruby." They reached the F-23 first. "Well, girls, see ya." She hugged Ruby and Pyrrha, and went to her aircraft.

"Someone's in a good mood this morning," Pyrrha commented with a smile. Ruby smiled back, because Yang wasn't the only one feeling chipper. It was good to see Pyrrha smiling. "Good hunting, Ruby."

"You too, Pyrrha." Ruby turned and sighed happily. She'd had a chance to look it over before the briefing, but it was _Crescent Rose_ for real this time—her single-seat F-16C, flown to Europe crated inside a C-5 Galaxy, and put back together. Her crew chief, the long-suffering, much traveled Master Sergeant Arnold Vogelmord had come with it, and as soon as he heard about the kills she'd scored from leaving Japan to arriving in Poland, he'd added them to the scoreboard on the intake. There were now 18 little red stars there, below the aircraft's name. On the tail shone the flaming rose; for now, it still carried the SG tailcode of Signal, like the rest of the former Reaper Flight aircraft. Ruby felt her eyes getting a little misty. "Hey there," she whispered to the aircraft. "Mommy's home."

* * *

"Ren," Nora said breathily, staring at her A-10 festooned with rocket pods and Maverick missiles, "I am _so_ wet right now."

Ren covered his eyes. "Really, Nora? You just _had_ to say that." Ren hoped that Nora's words weren't a prelude to something when—if—they got back. Ever since he had asked her to marry him, Nora had been insatiable in bed. Ren didn't mind, but Nora apparently believed that quantity had a quality all its own, and she was wearing him out.

"Hey, I've been playing fighter pilot for the past five months. Now I'm going to get to blow shit up." She drew him down into a kiss, then whispered in his ear. "Be careful, Ren. I love you."

"I love you, Nora." He kissed her again.

"Get a room!" Ruby shouted from across the tarmac.

"Go to hell!" Nora yelled back. She slapped Ren on the butt and ran to her A-10.

Marrow and Harriet watched, the Faunus shaking his head. "Man, I did not sign up to be a babysitter."

"Yeah, well, the rest of us babysit _you_ all the time, FNG," Harriet told him as she walked away. Marrow gave her a dirty look and headed for his F-35.

* * *

_East of the Belchatow Coal Mine_

_Belchatow, Poland_

_4 August 2001_

Qrow checked his infrared sensor, as he flew a mile ahead and to the left of Clover. His modified F-117 had a radar, but it retained the standard Nighthawk's IR sensor in the nose, which was highly sensitive. The Geist would be nearly impossible to pick up on radar, and he and Clover had theirs shut off anyway; the infrared sensor was a different story. The Geist didn't give off much heat, but that was better than its radar signature. He mumbled a curse word and keyed his radio. "Qrow to Clover. No joy."

"Roger that. No joy here either." There was a pause. "Qrow, keep me advised."

Qrow realized he hadn't checked in with Clover since they'd made the turn west over the Vistula River. "Clover, sorry about that. Not used to working with other Huntsmen."

"Qrow, Clover…weren't you with Strike Flight?"

"Long time ago, Clover."

"Damn shame, Qrow. Break break." Clover switched frequencies. "Vine, Clover, alpha check."

Vine's voice crackled in Qrow's earphones. "No joy here, air or ground. Approaching the mine now."

"Roger. Break. Harriet, Clover, alpha check."

* * *

Harriet flew high and behind the combat spread of Ruby Flight, with Marrow on her wing. "Clover, Harriet, scope clear. Maybe the GRIMM left." She let the mike button go. "Kind of tired of this shit." She tapped the button on the throttle again. "Blake, Harriet. Go nose hot. Let's see what we can stir up."

"Harriet, wilco." Blake reached forward and switched on the F-14's radar, thinking that Ruby was really the one who should be giving the order. She'd noticed that Harriet tended to think she was the one in charge. Blake watched the radar display. "Blake here. Scope clear." She left it on, and had an idea. "Ruby, Blake, I'm moving out ahead. See if I can troll for something."

"Roger, Blake. Yang, stay with her."

Blake accelerated, the Tomcat's wings swinging backwards as she did so; Yang stayed on her wing, below and to the right. Once clear of the formation, Blake descended down to five thousand feet, remembering when she had done this over Mountain Glenn. She'd missed Torchwick's hideout then, but GRIMM weren't as smart as humans. She looked through the Television Camera System slung under _Gambol Shroud's_ nose. Still nothing. She swept the ground for movement, then quartered the sky. "Yang, Blake, anything?"

"Blake, Yang, nothing. Not a damn thing. This place is dead."

_In more ways than one,_ Blake thought, because she knew Belchanow. She wiggled her wings to signal Yang and began a long turn back west to rejoin Ruby Flight. _Great. Just what I needed…more memories of Adam—_

_"Blake, break right!"_ Yang screamed.

Blake slammed the stick hard to the right before Yang even finished the sentence. She dropped flares behind her as a missile shot out of a cloud and guided towards her. More flares spilled from the back of the F-14 as Blake climbed towards the sun; one or the other finally decoyed the missile off.

"Harriet to all aircraft! Tally-ho on the Geist, five miles west of the coal mine!" Harriet led Marrow off and to the right, clearing the two of them to fire on the GRIMM without worrying about Ruby Flight being in the way; Ruby and Weiss split left for the same reason. No one picked up the Geist on radar, but now they could see it. Ruby remembered the one she had seen over Idaho: a scaled-down Nevermore, about the size of Penny's B-1, but the same batlike shape. It rose malevolently out of the clouds, then dived as Blake rolled out and headed for the ground.

Yang had been climbing as well, getting in behind the Geist, her Sidewinders growling as the Black Widow's IR sensor picked up the faint heat trail of the GRIMM's engines. Blake diving away and the Geist following her had ruined her shooting solution. "Blake, don't let it get away!"

"Fuck you!" Blake shouted back, because the Geist was tracking on her again. She streamed _Gambol Shroud's_ decoys and continued her dive, timing her pullout just right—or hoping so, anyway. The Geist wasn't all that maneuverable, and she might cause it to fly into the ground. The trick was not crashing herself. Blake waited until the coal mine was filling her windscreen, then hauled back on the stick, engaging the afterburners to climb away.

And that was when the world was suddenly filled with gunfire.

Blake yelled a terrible oath as she flung the Tomcat around, dodging as suddenly bright tracer fire reached out from the ground around the mine. Somehow _Gambol Shroud_ wasn't hit, the Centinels on the ground confused by the decoys. The Geist abandoned its dive even as its robotic brethren opened fire, turned east, and climbed back into the clouds.

"Yang, tally-ho! Centinels, a bunch of them, twelve o'clock low!" Yang was too busy trying to stay out of range of the ground GRIMM and find the Geist at the same time, but the latter had disappeared. "Snowbird, Snowbird! Centinels at the mine!" She climbed to rejoin Blake.

"Yang, Snowbird," said a feminine voice, the voice of the ground forward air controller. "We're twenty miles out to the west, but no friendlies in the area. You are weapons free!"

"Ruby, rolling in, south to north! Weiss, cover me!" Ruby dipped the nose of her F-16, switching her radar from air-to-air to air-to-ground. The AGM-65 Mavericks underneath her wings could be guided by lasers from her aircraft or ground personnel, but _Crescent Rose_ wasn't carrying LANTIRN pods, and Snowbird was still well to the west. Luckily, this version of the Maverick was also infrared guided. Ruby got lower and waited for one of the missiles to pick up the heat signature of the Centinels. She could see it, its green camouflage stark against the tan sides of the mine; it reminded Ruby of a crab, a turret set on a circular disk that skittered across the landscape. Her Heads-Up Display indicated a lock, and Ruby fired. One Maverick shot off the rail and headed for the nearest Centinel. It exploded a second later, drawing first blood; even as Ruby pulled off the target, Weiss—despite not being loaded for ground fighting—made a strafing run with her cannon, damaging a second Centinel.

Ruby came around for another pass, jinking hard to avoid any ground fire, and spotted two more of the ground GRIMM moving to the north. "Ruby, tally-ho, two Centinels, north of the mine!" She climbed, and to her surprise, watched as Yang's _Ember Celica_ dived and strafed the two GRIMM to the north; even more surprising was that one brewed up into a fireball as the F-23 came off its run. "Ruby's in, north to south!"

"Hang back, Ruby! Marrow's in, west to east." Marrow's F-35 roared in, and three Mavericks rippled off of its wings. Marrow might not have liked air-to-ground, but his aim was impeccable: all three missiles scored hits, destroying three Centinels. Two more shot at him as he climbed away, white contrails appearing at his wingtips. Those two died seconds later as Harriet exploded them with two more missile shots. "Vine, Harriet!" she called out. "We're engaged with Centinels at the mine! We could use some help here!"

* * *

"Harriet, Pyrrha, on our way." Pyrrha answered instead of Vine. She didn't hold it against Harriet; the girl was used to operating with her own flight, and in the excitement had clearly forgotten that Vine and Elm were under Pyrrha's command. "Norn Flight, expedite—"

"Nora, tally-ho, Centinels, two o'clock low! Rolling in!" Pyrrha looked in that direction, and saw three of the saucerlike GRIMM heading south at full speed. Nora dived on them, unloading a fusillade of rockets, and then opening fire with the GAU-8 in the nose of _Magnhild._ One Centinel flipped end over end as the gun shredded it; the others disappeared in gouts of dirt and bushes as the rockets destroyed them both, along with a fair portion of the landscape. Nora flew upwards a bit, but only to search for more targets; she was in her element.

"Norns, defensive split. Vine, follow me; Elm, join on Nora." Pyrrha led Vine and Ren up higher, watching the sky as Elm and Oscar descended to flank the A-10. "Ruby, Pyrrha, time on target, two minutes."

* * *

"Pyrrha, Ruby, may not need you! One left!" The Centinel formation had been destroyed in a matter of five minutes, with Ace Ops doing the lion's share of the work; Ruby had to admit that, despite Harriet and Marrow's bluster, they could back it up. "I'm in—"

"Harriet, _I'm_ in." _Crescent Rose_ wobbled in the jetwash as Harriet's F-35 flew past, diving on the last Centinel, which was desperately trying to get away to the east. "That little bitch cut me off," Ruby snapped to herself, even as Harriet obliterated the last GRIMM with her last Maverick. She thought about letting Harriet have it over the radio, but then Clover's voice called out, "Clover to all flights! Engaging Geist, five miles east of the mine!"

* * *

The Geist had emerged out of the clouds, going full speed to the east, when Qrow had spotted it. He rolled in, switching to guns, and opened fire. He cursed as he realized he'd overshot, even as the GRIMM turned to the right. Qrow dived away, clearing the Geist's tail for Clover. He didn't have much luck either, as the Geist evaded the F-35's cannon fire. Qrow looked up out of the windscreen of the F-117 and saw the GRIMM's weapons bay open. "Clover, break!"

Clover didn't question the call; no fighter pilot who liked living did. The F-35 snapped hard to the right, even as a missile fired backwards from the GRIMM; fooled by the sudden break and unable to reacquire the stealthy aircraft, the missile went ballistic and guided on nothing. As Qrow tried to get back into the fight, the Geist once more slipped into the clouds and disappeared.

Clover came back around and rejoined. "Qrow, Clover, do you got it?"

"No joy, Clover. It's gone."

"Clover to all aircraft. Geist is off scope, last seen bearing zero-zero-two, angels fifteen."

Qrow flew through a fluffy cumulus, half expecting to collide with the GRIMM, but nothing happened. "Dammit. Where the hell did that fucker go?"

"Ruby, Clover. It may be heading back your way." Clover thought he saw something flitting through the clouds, headed west.

* * *

Norn Flight had arrived—much to Nora's disgust, too late to destroy any more Centinels—and all of them watched the sky, and the ground, in case there were more GRIMM there. Movement attracted Ruby's eyes, and she checked in that direction. "Ruby, tally-ho, Geist! Eleven o'clock high!"

"Vine, tally-ho on the Geist. Am engaging." Pyrrha said nothing, sliding back to cover Vine; he was the closest to the GRIMM. He opened fire on it with his cannon, and the GRIMM dived for the ground to avoid it—and flew right into Elm's sights, who opened up as well. Vine had missed, but Pyrrha saw the telltale sparks of hits from Elm's gun.

The Geist broke away, trying to flee to the south, but now Marrow dived on it, scoring hits. Flames now trailed from the GRIMM, but missiles suddenly fired in all directions from its weapons bay, the launcher spinning in place below the Geist. Both flights fell apart to avoid the missiles, the sky filling with clouds of aluminum chaff and magnesium flares, buying just enough time for the Geist to turn back east. If a GRIMM could feel desperation, this one was, but as Ruby twisted away from a missile that sailed distressingly close over her head, she saw the Geist enter the clouds; even trailing smoke, she wondered if it would manage to get away again.

Then the cloud seemingly exploded, in a muffled flash of orange. Pieces rained down from the bottom of the cloud, and hit the ground in puffs of flame. Ruby saw another F-35 fly overhead, and felt the sonic boom. "Clover, splash Geist. What would you guys do without me?"

"Nice shot, Clover!" Ruby complimented. "Ruby to Snowbird. Your signal is Tiger, I say again, Tiger."

* * *

_Belchanow Airfield_

_Belchanow, Poland_

_4 August 2001_

Yang leaned against the F-23, shaking her hair free of sweat. "Woo doggies, that was fun."

"Fun?" Blake sat next to her. "I almost got my ass shot off! Twice!" She elbowed Yang in the shin. "'Don't let it get away!'" she mocked Yang. "I'm a second from buying the farm and you just want the kill!"

"Ow!" Yang hopped on one foot. "Quit bitching, Blake! You're alive, aren't you?"

Blake's retort, which was short and to the point, was cut off by the arrival of Ruby and Weiss. "I swear," Weiss commented, "they should just cut the act and get married."

"Ha! Blake wishes she could have someone as cute as me," Yang snickered.

"You okay?" Ruby asked Blake.

"I'm fine. No thanks to your sister." Blake got to her feet, sighed, and smiled at Yang. "Good thing I can't stay mad at you."

"Yeah, yeah. I knew you were joking around." Yang looked across the tarmac, to where Nora was stomping around her A-10. "Nora is super pissed. The one time she gets to do what the Warthog was designed to do, and we end up killing all the GRIMM before she gets there."

"Oscar said she got three," Ruby said. She thumbed towards the F-35s. "I guess Ace Flight lives up to the hype. Harriet may be a dork and Marrow's a noob, but they did a number on those Centinels."

"That Clover ain't half bad either," Yang observed. She kicked at the concrete blocks of the tarmac. "Not much to this place, huh? Good thing the Army's already here." She motioned at the parked M1 Abrams and M2 Bradleys at the end of the runway.

Ruby nodded. Belchanow had been built by the Soviets in the 1950s, but NATO had maintained it as an emergency base. It was bare bones, with only some dilapidated revetments for a handful of aircraft, along with an underground fuel bunker and fueling station; no personnel were assigned to it, and only a few Polish families lived in the nearby town. Belchanow was in the buffer zone, a no-man's land between the more settled and secure areas of western Poland, and the Vistula River, which marked the forward edge of the battle area—the FEBA—and the last barrier between Europe and the GRIMM-infested remains of the Soviet Union to the east. Somewhere, Ruby thought, over that horizon, was Salem.

"Are we going to talk about it?" Yang asked.

"About what?" Ruby wanted to know.

"What we learned from JINN." Ruby turned to her sister in surprise. Then again, Yang had always been good at reading her thoughts. "You sort of lied to Ironwood's face yesterday, Rubes. You told him we didn't turn JINN on." Yang's eyebrows furrowed. "Wow, that came out totally wrong."

"Yang has a point," Weiss said. "Technically, we could all be court-martialed for it."

"He'll understand," Ruby replied, though she wondered if she was trying to convince Weiss or herself. "We'll tell him. Maybe. I'm just…I mean, we didn't really learn anything new about Salem, really, and hell, Ironwood probably already knows all that stuff. Oscar agreed with me, by the way." Ruby saw Yang stare at her. "I talked to him this morning, Yang. When we were waiting for Ace Flight to pick us up?" That was true. After they had gotten back from the beer garden and Pyrrha had warned them not to stay up late, Ruby had gone to bed—even if she _had_ been tempted to ask Oscar for a nightcap.

"I agree," Blake put in. "The general's heart seems to be in the right place, but I'm not all that keen on telling him we sort of broke the rules." She shuddered. "And let's _never_ tell him about our cockeyed plan on getting into Europe. You know, flying beneath airliners?" Blake put her hands on the yellow nose of _Ember Celica_ and stretched, popping her back. "I don't trust him."

"Remember what Dr. Polendina said," Weiss advised. "Ironwood's under a lot of pressure. He _needs_ us to trust him, Blake."

"He needs to prove we _can_ trust him, Weiss," Blake shot back. Weiss looked taken aback by the tone of her friend's voice.

"Blake, I get that you're pissed at me for the Geist," Yang said, "but don't take it out on poor Weissy."

Blake sighed. "It's not…I'm sorry, Weiss." She waved towards the south. "I'm not pissed. It's just that I've been here before. This mine was originally closed off back around 1989 when they had a huge cave-in here."

"I remember that." Weiss stared off to the south. "Or rather, I remember how furious it made my father. There was an investigation. When Schnee GmbH reopened this mine in 1981, after the GRIMM got pushed back for awhile, they cut corners in safety precautions to get the mine operational. I guess maybe a few dozen died in that cave-in. Father got the investigation shut down. Nobody cared because everyone who was killed were Faunus."

"Two of them were Ilia Amitola's parents," Blake told her.

"Oh shit," Weiss breathed. "No wonder she came after me so hard over Mountain Glenn."

"It wasn't your fault, Weiss," Ruby reassured her.

"No, but I benefited from my father pulling things like that. I'm so very sorry, Blake."

Blake went over and put an arm around Weiss' shoulders. "Well, I'm hardly innocent myself. When your father tried to get the mine operational again, Adam…" Blake had to pause. She didn't want to think about her former lover again, ever. He was still haunting her dreams as it was. "Adam and I led the raid that wrecked those plans. One of our most successful." Blake didn't feel like mentioning that she had watched Adam line up every Schnee employee they had captured, and shoot them. At the time, Blake hadn't questioned it, had done nothing to stop it, and had thought nothing of it later, as she lay in Adam's arms in the woods. _When did I change?_ she asked herself.

Her thoughts were interrupted by Pyrrha waving for their attention. Ruby Flight walked over to join her, Qrow, and Norn Flight, as Ace Flight finished their postflight inspection and joined them as well. Ruby noticed a tall brunette dressed in tanker's coveralls that did nothing to hide her rather impressive bosom. _Man, everyone's boobs are bigger than mine,_ Ruby groused to herself. _Well, maybe not Weiss', at least._

Pyrrha smiled at Yang, even as Blake's ears stuck straight up in recognition. "Yang, I doubt _you_ remember, but she remembers you. This is Captain Karelia Bighorn-Vlata of the 1st Armored Division."

Yang couldn't place the face, though it was dimly familiar. "I don't know if I've met you or not."

"Yang!" Blake protested. "This is the tank commander who saved your life at Beacon!"

Karelia laughed. "Hey, I was just the taxi service. Your friend here is who tied off your arm." She shook hands with Yang. "You were in shock at the time. I see they gave you a new arm."

Yang grinned and drew the tanker into a hug. "Well, hot damn! I've always wanted to meet you! I owe your crew a case of beer. What are you doing here?"

Karelia thumbed back towards the tanks. "We'll collect. I'm with the 1st Armored. We're down at Czestochowa…got deployed here when Ironwood activated Reforger, us and the 5th Infantry up at Kalisz and the 3rd Infantry up at Kolobrzeg." She clapped Yang on the shoulder, then shook hands with Blake. "Good to see you again, jarhead."

"You too, treadhead. Small world."

"And then there's these guys!" Ruby waved at Clover and the rest of Ace Flight, deciding to let bygones be bygones about Harriet cutting her off. "Man, you guys did good."

"Well," Clover said with weighty importance, "Ace Flight was handpicked to perfectly compliment one another, so we can focus on our assets and leave our liabilities behind." He winked at Ruby, to show he wasn't quite serious.

"Some of us are all asset and zero liability," Marrow bragged. Elm snorted; Ruby wondered at the big woman, wondering how she could even fit into the F-35. "What?" He looked at her. "Think I've got some liabilities, Elm?"

"Your brains, for one," Elm deadpanned.

Marrow slumped, and Vine patted him on the shoulder. "You _did_ ask," the thin pilot said.

"I can believe you guys compliment each other," Nora told them, having gotten over her frustration. "Sorry you didn't get your rocks off, Elm." She pointed at the full warload on the F-35.

"No big. We'll get 'em next time."

"Good to have friends like that," Oscar observed.

Harriet's eyebrows went up. "Friends? Us?"

Elm laughed. "This isn't the schoolyard, _bubi._ We work together, that's all. We don't hang out after work or anything."

"That sucks," Yang said. "I've known these jokers for about five months, and they're family. When you go through so much with someone, it changes you, even in a short time."

"Oh hell," Harriet replied, "we get along well enough, sure. I count on them to keep my ass alive. They dod the same. But that's the job."

"And speaking of the job…" Clover pointed. Everyone turned at the clatter of rotors. Four dots on the horizon quickly grew to the buglike shapes of a UH-60 Blackhawk and three AH-64 Apaches. The attack helicopters paused and hung back, while the Blackhawk flared and landed next to the Ace Flight F-35s. As the rotors started to spin to a stop, they saw the tall figure of James Ironwood step out of the UH-60. "You folks stay here. I'll report to the general before he interrupts the revival here." Clover grinned—he had a very winning smile, Ruby had to admit—and walked over to Ironwood.

"So what do you guys want to do when we get back to Berlin? I'm up for another night of sightseeing!" Ruby exclaimed.

"I want to sightsee my bed," Blake yawned. Between dreams of Adam and Yang's snoring, she hadn't gotten much sleep.

"Aw, c'mon, Blake! We're finally getting some time off! I want to go exploring!"

"Ruby, we just explored half the damned world on the way here," Weiss pointed out.

"Yeah, the boring parts! We were in Almaty and Tehran and Incirlik, what, one night each? Not to mention getting attacked by frigging cannibals in Turkmenistan!" Ruby crossed her arms over her breasts. "I wanna go out, dammit!"

"Ruby." Pyrrha took her friend's elbow and led her towards Ironwood, who was motioning them over. "You too, Qrow!" the general called out, and Qrow slumped over to them. All of them came to attention and saluted Ironwood, who returned it.

"What's up, Jimmy?" Qrow didn't stand on ceremony. "What brings you out here?"

"I try to lead from the front, Qrow," Ironwood replied. "Captain Rose, I overheard you talking about Berlin—"

"I'm fairly certain _Salem_ overheard her talking about Berlin," Qrow interrupted.

Ironwood ignored him. "You can explore the city, but be careful. Don't go out in groups of less than four."

"Sir?" Ruby questioned. "If it's about the thing in the beer garden—"

"It's not. There was another murder last night—one of the local rabble-rousers, I guess you could say. He was found carved up, same as the others. Someone in Berlin is taking out people who speak out against NATO—specifically, against me. I didn't think it was a pattern, or maybe that it was a serial killer. But this man Forest was the third person to die in the last week."

"The opposition dropping dead isn't exactly a good look," Qrow agreed. Something about what Ironwood said about the murder tripped his memory, but he couldn't place it. Since he'd stopped drinking, Qrow found that some memories were more hazy than he remembered.

"I couldn't give two shits about my public image," Ironwood said, "but it's causing people to get nervous, and that's _not_ what we need. I think someone's trying to frame me, and by extension, the US armed forces. And it's working."

"I think it's the embargo, sir," Pyrrha spoke up.

Ironwood massaged the bridge of his nose. "You're right, Major. Things are rough right now. I'm not blind to that." He looked around. "The three flights did very well today. A couple more good days like that, and I might load up one of the divisions and send them home. Hopefully that'll convince the EU that I'm not doing this out of some sort of paranoid delusion." He noticed an Army radioman waiting patiently for him to finish. "Corporal?"

"Sorry to interrupt, sir. There's a helicopter on the way in, with Luftwaffe escort." The corporal paused. "It's Jacques Schnee, sir."

"Outstanding," Ironwood sighed. "Thank you, Corporal. Let him land." He nodded at Ruby. "Better let Weiss know. That's not going to be an easy reunion. Dismissed, ladies and gentlemen." He grabbed Clover's elbow. "Hold on just a moment, Major Ebi." Ruby, Qrow and Pyrrha moved away, and Ironwood dropped his voice. "Do we know if the package is secured?"

"Delta went down into the mine about thirty minutes ago," Clover told him quietly. "Captain Bighorn-Vlata reported it. She doesn't know why Task Force Metal is here; she was told that they're EOD, clearing the mine of booby traps for reopening it." Clover checked the sky as the distinctive thumping noise of a Huey helicopter began to draw closer. "Old Man Schnee coming here should reinforce that."

"Then they haven't reported in yet?"

"No, sir. That place is a labyrinth. It'll take them some time." He waved at the tanker, who waved back quizzically. "She'll tell you or me when Metal checks in, sir."

"Good. I hate to make you lie to your people, Clover, but no one else needs to know what's in that mine besides you, me, and Metal. Don't tell them." Ironwood saw Marrow, who was obviously trying to impress an unimpressed Karelia Bighorn-Vlata, using his hands to describe the fight over the mine. "Especially Marrow."


	23. Armageddon It

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's decorations time as Ruby and Norn Flights get recognition for their journey. 
> 
> But all is not well, because there was something in that mine...

_Belchanow Airfield_

_Belchanow, Poland_

_4 August 2001_

The UH-1D Iroquois—no one ever called it the latter; it would always be the Huey—landed on a cleared spot on the tarmac. Before the rotors had stopped, a security guard wearing the snowflake of Schnee GmbH stepped out of the copilot's seat, drew back the door, and stepped away as Jacques Schnee climbed out, dressed as usual in an impeccable white suit. He crouched under the spinning rotors and straightened up a short distance away, then strode directly to Ironwood. "So let me get this straight, James," he barked without preamble, in English, "in addition into forcing me into enacting this completely nonsensical embargo—one that is crippling my business, by the way—you've also decided you have the authority to commandeer private property?" He flung a hand at the mine. "It may not have been worked in four years, since that White Fang raid, but it's still mine! When the EU hears about this, you're in very deep—"

Ironwood had heard enough. "I've already informed them, Jacques," he said calmly. "As this is now the site of a military operation, as in pushing my forces closer to the Vistula Barrier, the EU Council doesn't get a say in it. However, as a courtesy, I did inform them, and there were no objections."

"What do you mean the EU doesn't get a say in it?" Jacques snapped.

"You might want to brush up on the law before you lose the upcoming election, Jacques. Military matters are the purview of Supreme Allied Commander, Europe." Ironwood pointed to the four stars on his shoulders. "Which would be me, in case you've forgotten." He next pointed to the helicopter. "You wasted your time coming here, Jacques, so you might as well mount back up and head back to Munich. I allowed you to land here as a courtesy. Once."

Jacques glared at him. "You seem to forget things as well, James. You seem to forget that I'm a much better friend than enemy. I'm going to get that Council seat, and when I do, you'll…" His voice trailed off as he looked beyond the general to the gathered pilots. "You…" For the briefest moment, Ironwood saw pain lance through Jacques' eyes, emotional pain, but then it was gone, replaced by rage. "You roped my missing daughter into this?"

"She wasn't missing, Jacques. I knew where Hauptmann Schnee was. If you gave a damn, you could've too."

Jacques ignored him and stalked forward. "How long has she been in Europe?" he yelled over his shoulder. "Does Winter know about this?"

The pilots closed ranks around Weiss, in a defensive circle, but Weiss gently moved Ren and Yang out of the way and met her father. "I made a decision to leave, Father, and I made one to come here as well. Did you forget?"

"If you think I'm one to forget anything, Weiss, then you've misjudged the man your father is!" Jacques shouted, in German.

Weiss continued to speak in English, to further irk him. Her mouth quirked into a sardonic smile. "Oh no, Father. I know _exactly_ the kind of 'man' you are."

Jacques' hands came up. "How _dare_ you speak to me that way? I've half a mind to—"

Blake stepped forward. "You take a shot at her, Schnee, and you're going to have half a mind." She nodded back at the three flights. "You mess with one of us, you son of a bitch, and you scramble with all of us."

Jacques stared daggers at her, then turned back to Ironwood—though his hands dropped to adjust his cufflinks. "You allow your pilots to speak to a superior like this?"

"I didn't hear anything," Ironwood replied, though he did shoot a warning glance at Blake. While beating the hell out of the CEO of Schnee GmbH would feel good, it would not improve European-American relations.

"Hmpf." He turned back to Weiss, his tone softening. "You know…your mother was devastated when you left. Didn't leave her room for days." He shrugged. "You know how she gets when she's depressed."

Weiss knew what he meant: her mother was drinking again. She'd stopped while Weiss was at Herrencheimsee, but the shock of her leaving might have been enough to get her to start again. Weiss wondered if Jacques knew who had helped her escape. "How's Whitley and Klein?" she asked, lowly.

"Whitley?" Jacques smiled, turning the knife. "Oh, you mean the heir to Schnee GmbH. He's well. Enjoying his summer vacation, I don't doubt. He'll be heading back to Eton in a few weeks. He asked me to make him heir, you know. As for Klein, well…" He sighed. "I'm afraid I had to let him go." Seeing Weiss on the defensive, her defiant gaze wilting, Jacques pressed his advantage. He looked at the pilots. "So these are the little friends you threw everything away for. Two redneck American cowgirls and a White Fang terrorist."

Blake's ears went straight back, and Yang's artificial hand tightened audibly into a fist. "Hey," Nora spoke up. "Make that _three_ American redneck cowgirls. And a hot Chinese dude and the Invincible Girl of Greece."

"Oh yes," Jacques nodded solemnly. "The _former_ Invincible Girl of Greece." Pyrrha went bright red, but not with embarrassment.

He might've said something more, but Weiss suddenly grabbed him by the front of his suit. "Listen to me, Father," Weiss growled. "These are not my friends. These are my _family._ And they're more my family than you ever were." She shoved him backwards.

Jacques went paler than usual; those words hit him harder than if Weiss had punched him. Then his mouth curled into a snarl, and he walked back to Ironwood. "I knew one day, you'd overextend your reach, James. I didn't come here to beg for an abandoned coal mine. I came here to thank you for _personally_ handing me the noose to hang you."

Ironwood stared down at him. "Get the fuck out of my AO, Jacques."

Jacques gave him a slow nod, walked back to his helicopter, and took off to clatter back to the west. "That's your dad?" Yang asked as the Huey receded. "What an asshole."

Weiss' agreement was cut off as a HMMWV drove up and stopped. One door opened, and Winter Schnee climbed out—though Weiss was surprised she was not in her Luftwaffe uniform or a flight suit, but what looked to be borrowed US Army battle dress uniform, complete with flak jacket. She saw the helicopter going away and nodded. "You just missed Father," Weiss called out.

"I wouldn't say I missed him," Winter replied. She quickly went to Ironwood, and dropped her voice to a whisper, barely audible; only he heard her. "The package is secured. The NEST team reports it is intact."

"Very good." Ironwood raised his voice. "Ruby Flight, Norn Flight, Ace Flight. Formation at 0900 tomorrow at Tegel, Hangar One. Full dress uniform. If you don't have them, I'll provide them." He smiled. "I think it's time for some decorations, and a birthday party for Captain Xiao Long."

"Well, I sort of already had one…" Yang said. They had toasted her at Incirlik, but everyone had been so exhausted and, with the prospect of another long flight to Algiers the next day, the one drink had been it; Yang's birthday present was a warm bunk.

"Not a real one!" Ruby exclaimed happily.

"0900, then." Ironwood's smile widened. "Now get out of here, all of you."

* * *

_Berlin-Tegel International Airport_

_Berlin, Federal Republic of Germany_

_5 August 2001_

"Attention! General officer present!" shouted Winter Schnee as Ironwood strode into the hangar. Ruby stifled a low whistle as she snapped to attention: she'd never seen Ironwood in his dress uniform. The four stars on both shoulders sparkled in the lights of the hangar, and ribbons and medals practically covered the left side of his chest. He wore silver command wings over the ribbons. He looked good.

Of course, she reflected, they _all_ looked good. Ruby, Yang, Nora, Qrow and Pyrrha all wore the dark blue of the US Air Force; Blake's Marine dress uniform was such a dark blue it was almost black. Weiss' and Winter's Luftwaffe uniform was more of a blue-gray; Ren's Chinese Unified Air Force outfit was a lighter shade of blue than the USAF one. Oscar stood out like a sore thumb: he was in Navy dress whites. Everyone had a fairly impressive row of ribbons, though only Qrow's rivaled Ironwood's. It had been a long time since Ruby had seen her uncle in his formal uniform. She noticed Winter miss a step at the sight of him; apparently, she'd never seen him in his dress uniform either. Ace Flight stood to one side in a single line; Ironwood walked between Ruby's F-16 and Pyrrha's F-22, parked to flank the pilots. At one end of Ace Flight stood Maria Calavera, who was not in her uniform, but a rather natty business suit.

"At ease," Ironwood instructed, and the pilots went to parade rest, hands behind and to the small of their back. Winter, joined by Penny—once more wearing a USAF uniform-took up position behind a table, where there were three briefcases, and Ruby's heart began to pound harder. The last time they had been decorated was at Beacon, where Ozpin had done the honors. There were a lot of friends she wished were present: some were alive and well, like Sun and Neptune; some were gone forever, like Jaune and Ruth. Of course, there had been a few people at that ceremony who were still alive, but that Ruby swore she'd see next in a gunsight pipper: Cinder Fall, Mercury Black, and Emerald Sustrai.

Ironwood began to speak, bringing Ruby's attention back to the here and now. "It's only fitting that we should be able to reconvene," he said. "When the world needs to be brought together more than ever. The road you traveled from our first meeting hasn't been easy."

Penny was practically bouncing up and down, a ridiculously huge smile on her face; Winter nudged her to calm her down. Ironwood nodded to both of them. "You fought for America and your friends at Beacon. You fought for the world at Japan, and beyond. You have faced down terrors civilians can't even fathom." Winter opened one briefcase and came over to Ironwood's side, as Penny almost skipped over to join them. "When you were selected for Vytal Flag, it was with the knowledge that, when you graduated, you would be given the title Huntsmen and Huntresses. That honor was never conferred on you, but you have earned it. I think, if Ozpin was here, he would agree." Ironwood stepped back. "Pilots, remove your wings—except for you, Qrow." He laughed. "Penny, if you would collect them…"

All of Ruby and Norn Flights removed their wings and placed them into Penny's hands. Winter then walked down the line, handing each pilot a new set—silver for all but Blake and Oscar; gold for them. Each set of wings, however, now had a single diamond of a five pointed star in the middle rather than the shield of the normal wings, indicating that the wearer was a Huntsman or a Huntress. Ruby's hands trembled as she managed to pin hers on. "You are now _officially_ Huntsmen and Huntresses," Ironwood remarked. "As such, you are now free hunters, able to file flight plans and hunt down the GRIMM, wherever and whenever they should appear. Under normal circumstances, you would be attached to squadrons or air wings, but today, I'm going to form you into your own squadron. Ruby and Norn Flights, you are now the 77th Tactical Fighter Squadron, reporting directly to me and based here at Berlin-Tegel. We'll move you to Poznan as soon as we get the room. Naturally, you'll still be known as Ruby and Norn Flights, and working with Ace Flight, but you now have a formal squadron structure and number. We'll repaint the appropriate tailcodes when that happens."

"Sir?" Ruby raised her hand. "General, sir…I think it would be, well, really cool if we put Beacon's tailcode on our birds. To honor Captain Ozpin."

Ironwood paused, then grinned. "I like it. We'll let Salem know who she's facing." Once more, he turned to Winter. "Oberst Schnee, if you could do the honors once more…" She had returned to the table, and now she opened the second briefcase. "On behalf of the nations of the United States, the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Unified Republic of China, I award the following decorations to these pilots, who have shown great courage and gallantry in the face of the enemy."

The general read off the names, and as Penny held the briefcase, Winter pinned on the medal and shook hands with them. Ruby, Weiss, Blake, Yang, Oscar, Ren and Nora were awarded their second or first Distinguished Flying Crosses, while Weiss and Yang also received Purple Hearts—Yang for her arm at Beacon, Weiss for her leg injury at Nishinoshima. Pyrrha was awarded the Silver Star for her leadership on the journey west, while Nora was also awarded an Air Medal for getting her shot-up A-10 back to Atsugi. Winter pulled out a special medal for Ren: the CUAF's Meritorious Service Medal, 1st Rank, roughly the equivalent to the Silver Star. Nora giggled as her fiancee blushed, when Winter pinned the medal on his tunic.

"Now there's a few last things," Ironwood said after the medals were pinned on. "First of all, this squadron needs a commanding officer. Squadrons are usually commanded by majors, and we had two to choose from: Pyrrha Nikos and Qrow Branwen. After consulting with Major Nikos this morning, I have decided to select Qrow Branwen as the 77th TFS' commanding officer."

"Jimmy, no—" Qrow tried to protest.

Ironwood held up a hand. "Tough luck, Qrow; it's an order. You've had some rough times, but Major Nikos assures me that she has the highest confidence in your ability to command—and so do I. And I'm sure everyone in this squadron would agree. Besides, it's high time I do this." Ironwood reached forward and took off the golden oakleaves on Qrow's shoulders. While he stood there, stunned, Winter handed Ironwood a pair of silver oakleaves, which Ironwood pinned on. "Congratulations, _Lieutenant Colonel_ Branwen. Granted, a squadron's a bit small for a man of your rank, but we can make an exception."

Qrow was shaking his head. "Jimmy, please. I don't want this." His voice was thick with emotion.

"Qrow, it's overdue." He put his hands on Qrow's shoulders. "With enemies without and within, I need men and women I can trust, like you." He stood away from Qrow and looked at all of them. "I should be so lucky to have all of you, and trust all of you." Ruby kept her eyes forward, but in her peripheral vision, she saw Weiss and Yang share a glance, and Blake's ears went down a little. _I'll tell him,_ she told herself. _I swear I will._

Ironwood took their silence as being overwhelmed. He wasn't completely wrong. "It's okay," he told them. "This is a big moment. Take it all in." He smiled again. "Besides, we're not _quite_ finished." He cleared his throat. "Director Arashikaze?"

Ruby's eyes widened as she saw the short woman they knew so well walk out of the shadows of the hangar, as if the Deputy Director of Intelligence for the Central Intelligence Agency had simply materialized. She was wearing her own severely-cut business suit, and Ruby wondered if Rissa Arashikaze actually owned any other clothes.

"Good morning," she addressed them. "It's good to see you. I'm glad you made it." She smiled, and for a moment, they saw the human being behind the armor. "Very glad. It's been quite the journey. But I didn't just come here to congratulate you for making it over the finish line. I have my own awards to make." This time, Winter opened the third briefcase, and she held it as Arashikaze took three medals out of it, one at a time. It was a golden disk, surmounted by another star, an eagle's head, and the shield of the CIA. "Oberleutnant Weiss Schnee, Captain Blake Belladonna, and…" Arashikaze half-turned "…Lieutenant Colonel Maria Calavera, please step forward."

"Me?" Maria looked around, then hesitantly hobbled forward, leaning on her cane. "Why me?"

"Because the three are you are being awarded the Intelligence Star," Arashikaze answered her. "For voluntary acts of courage performed under hazardous conditions." She pinned on the medal below their ribbons. "Oberleutnant Schnee, you are awarded this for your actions over the Salton Sea. Captain Belladonna, yours is for your actions in Menagerie against the White Fang's attempted coup. And Colonel Calavera, this is for…shall we say…services rendered, both on this mission and in the past. Like Colonel Branwen's promotion, this is overdue."

"I…I don't know what to say…" Maria actually sounded like she was about to cry.

"How about 'I will never intimidate a French brigadier general and cause an international incident again'?" Arashikaze smothered a smile as Maria spluttered, and then withdrew a final medal from the last briefcase. "And this medal is for Captain Ruby Rose. Speaking of a certain brigadier general, she nominated you for this. The French government was somewhat circumspect, but after consultation with the French Air Force, they felt it was warranted." She pinned the medal next to Ruby's DFC. It was a green and white five-pointed star; in the center was the head of a woman, with the words _Republique Francaise_ around her. "Captain Ruby Rose, as a Grand Officer, it is my pleasure and honor to award you the Legion of Honor, and commission you as a _Chevalier_ of the Legion. The medal is awarded to you by special order of the Republic of France, and by the invitation of Brigadier General Caroline Cordovin, for your actions at Algiers, Republic of Algeria, on 31 July 2001."

"W-W-Whoa," Ruby stammered. She'd heard of the Legion of Honor. There were several classes and there were hundreds of other Americans who had been awarded it, from soldiers to fighter pilots to entertainers, but that was still a very select group.

"Indeed so," Arashikaze said. "I don't wear mine often…except to parties with Congresspeople. They tend to perk up." She shook hands with Ruby. "Congratulations."

"Yeah, Rubes!" Yang punched her fist in the air, and everyone began applauding.

"Well," Ironwood said, once the clapping had stopped, "that's about all the pomp I've got in me. Since generals tend to ruin all the fun, and Miss Arashikaze would like to speak to me before she leaves, I'll take _my_ leave." He stopped. "Oh, one more thing. Penny, if you would do the honors…"

No one had noticed that Penny had disappeared after Arashikaze began awarding medals. She next wheeled in an enormous cake, in the shape of a F-15. It had blue and white frosting, and 24 candles on it. "Happy birthday, Yang Xiao Long!" Penny announced.

" _Her, her, FUCK HER!"_ everyone yelled, even Ace Flight. Yang let out another war whoop and lunged for the cake. Ironwood backed away. Arashikaze took hold of Weiss' sleeve, and dropped her voice. "We recovered Rick Tardor's body a few days ago. He will be awarded the Distinguished Intelligence Cross—our highest award at CIA—and a star on our memorial wall."

Weiss nodded. "Thank you for telling me, Director. What about Raven Branwen?"

Arashikaze's eyes became pitiless. "Her time is coming. For now, I've been asked to stand down, especially with all this happening here in Europe. But I tell you, Weiss, I will see that woman _buried_ for what she has done." Weiss nodded again, resisting the urge to swallow nervously. Once more, the mask dropped, but this time there wasn't a human being there.

* * *

Arashikaze followed Ironwood to his HMMWV. There was no one else in the vehicle. Arashikaze pulled a small metal box from a pocket and swept it around the interior, twice, then got in. "I already had it checked," Ironwood reassured her.

"I know," Arashikaze replied, sat down, and shut the door.

"What do you have for me?" Ironwood asked. "When do you think Salem will attack?"

Arashikaze raised her hands. "Hold on, James. All I have is noise, and some very vague satellite images. We're still putting it all together. I don't have a lot of assets in the former Soviet Union. Just reports here and there."

"Such as?"

"None of your damn business," she snapped. The muscles at the sides of Ironwood's jaw bunched, so she relented a little. "All right. I'll tell you what I can. We found a teenaged boy at Darvaza when one of my teams hit the place a few days ago. He was the only one there. Everyone else was evacuated by what he called a 'tall white-skinned woman.' Not Caucasian, but bone white. He was terrified, so he hid."

"Salem for sure," Ironwood commented. "Damn. Too bad we didn't know. She must not leave Russia often."

"At least not that we know of," Arashikaze corrected. "So that pipeline for new aircraft is cut off for her, but they've been supplying her for months. It's almost certainly where most of the aircraft used by the White Fang and at Beacon came from, what she couldn't purchase from Torchwick or Malachite. Speaking of the latter, she's told me that Cinder Fall, Adam Taurus, and Neo Politan were headed for Europe to try to grab JINN. We no longer have to worry about Taurus, of course, but Cinder and Neo are a different story. They could easily slip past this so-called embargo. It seems Cinder Fall is in Salem's doghouse, and that's how she gets back in her mistress' good graces." Bribing Malachite had taken some cash, but it had been worth it.

"It's safe," Ironwood told her. "If Salem were to get JINN…"

"She would have access to everything, aside from stuff we've got that I never entrusted to Ozpin." Which was a lot, she thought to herself, but not enough. "So make sure Salem doesn't get the damn thing." Arashikaze leaned back in the seat. "There's one other thing I can tell you. We've managed to salvage that Nuckelavee Reaper Flight destroyed on Sakhalin."

Ironwood's eyebrows went up. "We actually recovered a GRIMM intact?"

"Somewhat. The problem was, it's an older design. Damn near unstoppable in prime condition, but this one was old. We were able to decode its communications array. It was definitely made in the former USSR, and from what we could get, almost certainly in the Urals."

Ironwood brightened. "Then we know where she is."

"I have my suspicions, but I need something more concrete before I send in the B-52s. The President and the new SecDef won't move on a partial decoding of a 25-year old GRIMM and a short girl's guess." She sighed. "Summer Rose was probably right all along, but only God knows what happened to her."

"Yamantau?" Ironwood whispered.

"Possibly. There's other underground bunkers in the Urals; the Soviets were like moles in there. They moved whole factories underground during World War II, when they thought the Nazis were going to overrun them. Anyway, we have to be sure. And then we have to figure out how to reload the Fall Maiden….Shuttle mission or something." She looked up at Ironwood. "Or we use the Winter Maiden, which is in a better position anyway."

"As long as Fria is still alive, we don't have access to it. Once she passes on, then Winter can take over." Ironwood gazed out the armored window. "I hate saying it, Rissa. Fria's a good woman. She's the only one of the original Maiden bearers left. I hate to be just taking advantage of a dying woman. Her faculties are still sharp as ever, and I think she knows what we're doing, but she knows the stakes. Besides, she likes Winter."

Arashikaze nodded. "I hate to say it as well. Fria is a friend." She put her hands in her lap. "All right, General; I've shown you mine, now show me yours. What did you find at Belchanow?"

"Exactly what we thought we'd find, what I told you we'd find, after we found those old Soviet records in the ruins of Warsaw." He smiled at her. "One intact R-12 Dvina ICBM, complete with one warhead with a 1.2 megaton yield."

"Which the NEST team disarmed," Arashikaze said warily.

"Which they _think_ they disarmed. I can reactivate it in less than ten minutes. Major Ebi assures me that the warhead can be adapted to a bomb casing capable of being carried in a B-52. The crew would be told it's a fuel-air bomb." Ironwood stabbed a finger towards the east. "If that bitch Salem comes across the Vistula, I'll blow her white-skinned ass back to Siberia."

Arashikaze stared at him. "You're serious."

"I told you I was when we got those documents."

"Nuclear weapons have been banned, James."

"The Israelis have them—"

She held up a hand. "The Israelis are _suspected_ of having them. That's different from confirming the fact. God, James, the EU is already pissed about the Fall Maiden. Now you're talking about detonating a fucking megaton-yield nuke in central Poland?"

"Only as a weapon of absolute last resort," Ironwood told her. " _Absolute_ last resort. But if Salem comes at me, full-court press, our three Polish divisions and four American ones might not be enough. The Germans might not move their divisions forward into Poland, especially if they think we're better off falling back to the Oder—and they might be right, who knows." He slammed a hand into the side of the HMMWV, making it rock. "Rissa, I'm not going to get caught with my pants down like we did at Beacon! I'm going to use _every_ weapon I have at my disposal, and if that means I go down in history as the third American to use a nuclear weapon, so be it. At least we'll save Europe from her."

Arashikaze was silent. "All right," she said finally. "I'll keep it quiet. Against my better judgement, because I trust you, James. But Salem better be walking into your fucking command post before you drop that thing, because if you use it without a good reason, the President and the EU's only regret will be that they can only hang you once." She poked him in the chest. "And I'll tell them I don't even _know_ you."

"You'd betray me?" Ironwood asked darkly.

"Don't even start that with me," Arashikaze warned. "I won't and you know it. Ozpin was paranoid about letting people in, James. Don't be like him."

Ironwood took a deep breath and relaxed. "Sorry, Rissa. It's been a rough few weeks."

She rubbed her eyes. "This won't help you any. President Shawcross is ordering the 3rd Infantry Division back to the US."

"He _what?"_ Ironwood exclaimed. "What the hell for? Those are _my_ troops!"

"You forget that he's the commander in chief there, MacArthur? Because if you lip off to him like that, you're going to end up just like Doug did." Arashikaze folded her arms over her breasts. "I'm not happy about it either, but the new SecDef likes the idea, Congress loves the idea, and it will lessen some tension with the EU. And if you announce it yourself, it might give Robyn Hill a boost in the polls."

"Or Jacques, if he can take credit for it."

"Democracy is the worst form of government except all the others," Arashikaze quoted. "Anyway, make the announcement tomorrow and it's God bless us, every one. Don't and you will get a call that you're fired." She closed her eyes and groaned. "Look…get some sleep, James. Go eat some cake, at least. Have some fun. Relax. You look like the fourth day of a three day binge."

Ironwood chuckled. "Like that time in China…"

She opened her eyes and playfully shoved him. "Oh, no. Bad enough Calavera remembers that. Glynda sends her love, by the way—she's out of the hospital."

"That's good." Ironwood considered the diminutive woman, then laughed. "Dammit, you're right. Let's go have some cake."

* * *

_Mount Yamantau_

_Ural Mountains, Russia_

_6 August 2001_

Hazel Rainart knocked hesitantly on the door to Salem's private rooms. He was more or less back in her good graces, but found that even a big man like him could fear her. By all respects, he should be able to break Salem like a twig. In fact, when she'd first recruited him and had him brought to Yamantau, he'd been drunk, still grief-stricken over Gretchen Rainart's death. He had taken a swing at her; even drunk, it would've broken her jaw. Instead, he found himself flat on his back, staring up at her, judo thrown almost effortlessly.

" _Da?_ " she said in Russian.

"It's Hazel," he replied.

"Oh. Come in, Hazel." The door unlocked itself and swung open, and he walked in. He had never been in her chambers before, and to his surprise, they were far from spartan. They were actually luxurious, with fixtures taken from what looked to be some very rich hotels. "In the bathroom," she called out, and he followed her voice. The bathroom was equally heroic, and Salem was in a large bath that took up a good portion of the room, partially hidden by steam. "Good morning," she greeted him.

"Good morning, Miss Salem." He held up a piece of paper. "A report, from our sources in Poland."

"Ah. Read it to me, please."

"The mine at Belchanow was empty. Our spies were able to infiltrate it after the NATO forces withdrew from the mine itself. A squadron of fighters shot down and destroyed all of the GRIMM around the mine, after which General Ironwood personally landed, and what appeared to be a Nuclear Emergency Support Team arrived, along with what may have been either US Army Special Forces or Rangers. Our operatives waited until late that night, and explored the mine storage areas. They were empty."

Salem nodded. "Then Ironwood recovered it."

"May I ask what it was?"

She shrugged. "A nuclear missile. One of our old R-12s. It was hidden down there by retreating Soviet forces after the war. I learned about it about the same time Ironwood did, thanks to our Dr. Watts." She sighed. "I should've sent more GRIMM to the area, but I thought he would just leave it alone. It appears I was wrong."

"Is the warhead still operational?"

"More than likely. That mine would have preserved it."

"Does this change anything?"

"Nothing at all." Salem nodded towards him. "Thank you, Hazel. Let Watts know. Any word from Cinder?"

"Nothing yet," he replied.

"She's proving to be a disappointment." Another shrug. "Dismissed, Hazel. I'll call a meeting in an hour or two. After my bath." A smile. "I should have _some_ vices, yes? Thank you again." Hazel bowed, set the paper down on the counter, and left. Salem put her arms to keep herself upright, and stretched out her long legs in the bath. "So, Ironwood has a nuke," she said aloud. "So be it." Salem stared at the ceiling. "After all, he wasn't the only one to recover nuclear missiles after the war. If he chooses to unleash another armageddon, so will I."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So ends "On RWBY Wings IV." Be sure to look out for "On RWBY Wings V" later in the week. As always, thanks to everyone who keeps reading this story, and keeps reviewing it (and I can always use more of those). The journey west is over, but the war has just gotten started.


End file.
